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TH E 
IRISH ORATORS 

A History of 
IRELAND'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM 






By CLAUDE G. BOWERS 



Illustrated With Photographs 



" Ireland is a land worth fighting for ." 

— Thomas Francis Meagher. 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1916 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 




To replace lost copy 



OCT -7 1930 



408 WLfityariea St. 



FOREWORD 

It would have "been unfortunate if 
the author of this volume had not placed 
it in the hands of the public. His de- 
mand and success as a public speaker 
upon Irish topics led him to a deep 
study of the history of that glorious 
nation, and the deeper he studied the 
more fascinated he became. His work is 
imbued with the spirit of his own re- 
searches and in turn fascinates the 
reader. 

Among the great men who pass in re- 
view, Daniel O'Connell is given high 
place and justly so, for he was a most 
worthy leader of the people for over a 
generation. His preeminence recalls 
the estimation of him held by the Count 
de Montalembert who said that O'Connell 
was the finest orator whom he had lis- 
tened to, or whose works he had read. 

The reader will find this valuable 
contribution to the story of Ireland's 
greatness impartial, instructive and 
interesting and of such appeal that he 
will not be satisfied until he reads to 
the end* 



c* <r* 



INTRODUCTION 

The history of Ireland is one of romance and trag- 
edy. To trace the inspiring story of her struggle for 
nationality from the beginning of the great parliamen- 
tary battle in the Dublin parliament to the present 
time, letting her interpret her own aspirations and 
voice her own protest through her chosen tribunes, 
has been an absorbing task. Deprived of arms by her 
oppressors, she has fought her fight with brains. Her 
challenge to the justice of the world has been made by 
voice and pen. Thus her orators have been her lead- 
ers — the interpreters of her aspirations — and if, at 
times, the spirit of militancy has been evoked, it is 
worthy of notice that the greater portion of her mili- 
tants have been as brilliant on the platform as they 
have been brave upon the field. 

The battle for Irish rights began in a mild and in- 
effective manner under the leadership of Doctor Lucas, 
the writer, and Anthony Malone, the orator, a few 
years before Henry Flood entered the Irish house of 
commons in the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
but of this we know little beyond what tradition has 
bequeathed us. It was with the entrance of Flood that 
the vigorous challenge of the English pretension to the 
right of domineering over Ireland began. He was the 
first of the tribunes. With the single exception of a 
few dark years during the fifth decade of the nine- 
teenth century, the tribunate of the Irish people has 



INTRODUCTION 

been filled by an orator and leader of exceptional bril- 
liance, in whose activities centered the hope of the 
race. 

Flood, Grattan, Plunkett, O'Connell, Meagher, Butt, 
Parnell — the careers of these men, in the ensemble, 
constitute the history of Ireland from the vice-royalty 
of the insufferable Townsend to the beginning of the 
present century. Two splendid and inspiring men of 
genius who never aspired to political leadership but 
whose work for Ireland constitutes an essential part 
of any history of the struggle for nationality were 
John Philpot Curran and Robert Emmet. The one 
wrought as brilliantly in the courts, and the other as 
inspiringly upon the scaffold, as O'Connell on the hust- 
ings, or Parnell in the halls of Westminster. 

Thus I have tried to set forth through the studies 
of these nine men all the essential facts in the history 
of Ireland from the middle of the eighteenth to the 
beginning of the present century. 

In treating of the political history of Ireland 
through studies of the great orators who have been 
her leaders I have had another object in view — to em- 
phasize the genius of the Irish race. In the long list 
there is not one who does not tower above the level 
of the commonplace. Scarcely one there is whose elo- 
quence would not have imparted luster and distinction 
to any race, or any period, in the history of the world. 
Even the militant band of patriots who have ques- 
tioned the feasibility of constitutional agitation can 
consistently respect these men who fought the patriots' 
battle with voice and pen — for they, too, stood in con- 
stant danger of physical violence. 



INTRODUCTION 

Thus, during the shameless period of Castlereagh's 
desperate enterprise, Grattan lived within the shadow 
of the assassin's dagger; and Plunkett, confronted by 
the dueling club of the mercenaries, organized for the 
assassination of the patriots, met the danger with a 
bold challenge to their cowardice. 

Thus Cur ran was in constant jeopardy of his life 
and liberty while defending the patriots of '98. 

Thus Emmet immolated his noble life upon the scaf- 
fold and rests in an unmarked and an unknown grave. 

Thus O'Connell, often marked for murder, fed on 
prison fare. 

Thus Meagher was sentenced to be hanged, drawn 
and quartered. 

Thus Parnell was thrown like a felon into the 
gloomy confines of Kilmainham prison. 

These tribunes of Erin were not fair weather patri- 
ots or men of idle words. They faced throughout their 
lives the storms of hate, and backed their words with 
their lives. 

Without exception, they were men of fascination, 
magnetism and ineffable charm — fit characters for a 
canvas or a romance. 

They were great, not alone because of the Cause 
they stood for, but because nature molded them from 
superior clay. Not one of them was a mere method- 
ical plodder, rising to prestige and power by cunning 
or through the laborious cultivation of ordinary tal- 
ents. They all had the divine spark. 



INTRODUCTION 

Flood and Grattan, playing Shakespearian roles in 
the charming country houses of the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; — Curran, captivating the drawing-rooms and en- 
trancing the cleverest men in Europe by his social 
grace and conversational brilliance at his table at The 
Priory; — O'Connell, in patriarchal simplicity joining 
in the festivities of his tenants on the lawn at Darry- 
nane; — Sheil shivering in the dressing-room of Drury 
Lane awaiting the verdict of the monster, The Public, 
on his latest comedy; — Meagher, amid the shot and 
shell of Fredericksburg; — Butt, writing charming es- 
says and fascinating the gay denizens of the Bohemia 
of London while fleeing the debt collector; — Parnell, 
riding to hounds and unlimbering among the boon 
companions at Aughavannagh, and trembling, boy- 
wise, before the mask of superstition — each and all 
of them were flesh and blood, virile, subject to lovable 
weaknesses while wearing the Olympian crown of gen- 
ius. So great were they as men, mere men, that it 
were a pity to present them to posterity as steel engrav- 
ings, or to hide their rare personalities in their political 
activities. 

These men are to Ireland all that Plutarch's men 
were to Greece and Rome. Their eloquence and gen- 
ius have served through more than a century to lift 
Ireland from the valley of her Gethsemane to illumi- 
nated heights where all the world can see and under- 

stand C. G. B. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I. Henry Flood ........... Page 1 



Flood's parentage— Birth — Fashionable dissipation at Trinity 
— Af Oxford — At the Temple — Appearance in early manhood — 
Enters Irish parliament — Plight of parliament in 1759— Its sub- 
serviency to England — Its corruption — Flood attacks corrupt 
practises — The Undertakers — Flood organizes an Opposition — 
He creates a potential public opinion — Marriage — Life at Farm- 
ley — Theatricals. 

II 

Marquis of Townsend, viceroy — His character and career — His 
plan to increase the army and limit life of parliament — Opposi- 
tion of the aristocratic party — The Limitation bill — Why Flood 
supported it — The Augmentation bill — Aristocratic party accepts 
Flood's leadership of the opposition — Flood's relation to the fac- 
tions — -Townsend dissolves parliament — Resorts to desperate 
measures in the election— Tries intimidation — The Money bill — 
Flood leads fight against it — Defeat of the bill — Townsend pro- 
rogues parliament — Public opinion aroused — Flood organizes 
public opinion against Townsend — Flood turns pamphleteer — 
Townsend retorts with wholesale corruption — Flood attacks 
Townsend in philippic — Attack demoralizes the Castle minions — 
Flood leads another successful fight against the Money bill — 
Becomes a popular idol — Lionized in London. 

in 

Lord Harcourt, viceroy — Character and career — He cultivates 
Flood — Flood wavers — He accepts office — Secret state papers ex- 
pose his weakness — Harcourt's secret report on Flood — Harcourt's 
letters to Lord North about him — The unfortunate alphabetical 
list — Flood loses popularity — His unpopularity capitalized by 
Harcourt — Flood's explanation — Harcourt succeeded by the Earl 
of Buckinghamshire — Flood's power vanishes — His own defense 
of this period. 

IV 

Patriot party declines his leadership — Jealousy of opponents — 
Grattan's Declaration of Rights — Flood demands simple repeal 
—Flood's position popularizes him with the Volunteers— He be- 



CONTENTS— Continued 

comes leader of the radicals — His great speech — Triumph of 
simple repeal — Flood's famous quarrel with Grattan. 



Flood becomes spokesman of the Volunteers — Leads their 
fight against "fensible regiments" — Arouses the people to fever 
heat — Volunteers' National Convention in Dublin — Its clash with 
parliament — Revolutionary conditions — Convention formulates 
parliamentary Reform bill — Flood presents it to parliament — 
Scene in the house — Flood's eloquent appeal — Bitter fight against 
it — Its defeat — Is reintroduced in the next session — Gets popular 
support — Flood's second plea — Defeated again — Flood's motives 
i — The vindication of time. 

VI 

Flood enters English parliament — His status at Saint Stephens 
• — Retirement and death — His character. 

VII 

Difficulties in judging his fame as an orator — Physical advan- 
tages — Theatrical manner — Dramatic sense — Chatham-like au- 
dacity—Introduces rhetorical eloquence in Irish parliament — ■ 
Grattan's criticism — Argumentative power — His flashes of fancy 
— His status. 



Chapter II. Henry Grattan ........ Page 45 



Grattan's father — At Dublin University — His unhappy youth 
— Studies — At the Temple — Influences of Chatham's eloquence — 
Oratorical studies — Returns to Ireland — Country house theatri- 
cals — Admission to the bar — "The Society of Granby Row" — 
Early companions. 

II 

Enters Irish parliament — The embargo on Irish exports — In- 
dustrial depression — Expenses of government increased — Grattan 
opens fight on the embargo — His first speech — Effect on Fox — 
Attacks the pension list and salary grab — Increasing poverty in 
Ireland — Lord North's jest — Government bankrupt — The rise of 
the Volunteers — Grattan begins fight on commercial restrictions 
— Forces through an amendment to the address on the subject — 
Its presentation to the Castle — The king's evasion — Threat of the 
Volunteers — Grattan defends them — The people's fury — Grattan 
leads fight to withhold the next taxes — American revolution tac- 
tics—Free trade won — Grattan pushes his advantage — Announces 
he will introduce a Bill of Rights — The timid hold back — Burke's 



CONTENTS— Continued 

protest — Grattan's precarious situation — He moves the Declara- 
tion of Rights — His stirring speech — Resolution seconded by 
Castlereagh's father — Lord Clare's abuse — Flood urges postpone- 
ment — Parliamentary device saves it from defeat — England fol- 
lows with duty on raw sugar — The people aroused — The Mutiny 
bill — Grattan attacks it — His speech — The people organize — Vol- 
unteers become a national institution — Military spirit grows — ■ 
People turn to parliament — Volunteers' Convention demands the 
Declaration of Rights — Grattan again advocates the declaration— ^ 
His speech — Attempts to deter him — The English minister intimi- 
dated — Grattan keeps open house — He again moves the Declara- 
tion — His speech — The victory. 

in 

England's duplicity — Pitt's commercial propositions — -Grattan 
leads fight on them — His speech — Ministry turns to the corrup- 
tion of parliament — The government's pension list— Grattan at- 
tacks it — He attacks the Navigation Act. 

IV 

He leads the fight for the reform of the tithe evils — The 
misery they entailed — His speech demanding an inquiry — The 
regency controversy — Grattan leads Irish to support the prince 
— Incurs hatred of Pitt and Clare. 



Grattan forces concessions to Catholics — His emancipation 
speech — The Fitzwilliam incident — Treachery of Pitt — Fitzwill- 
iam recalled — Dublin in mourning. 

vi 

England determines to rule by corruption — Grattan begins 
fight on the system — His philippic — Government curtails visitors' 
space in house of commons — Grattan continues his philippics- 
Charges corruption in the house — Government refuses inquiry 
into the charge — Grattan makes tremendous attack on ministers — 
He begins fight for parliamentary reform — The government 
passes a mutiny act — Also notorious indemnity act — It suspends 
writ of habeas corpus — General Lake tries to disarm the Irish — 
Grattan's protest— Rise of the United Irishmen— Grattan retires 
from parliament. 

VII 

Grattan physically broken— Attempts to trap him— Ruffians 
terrorize Mrs. Grattan — Grattan threatened with assassination-^ 
Ordered by physicians to Isle of Wight — Urged to return to par- 
liament to fight the union — He consents — First debate on the 



CONTENTS— Continued 

union — Grattan's dramatic reappearance — His physical wealeness 
—His protest — He challenges the lord lieutenant's message — Re-» 
plies to Corry's defense of the union — Duel with Corry — Second 
debate on the union — Grattan's final protest — The union consum- 
mated — Crushing effect on Grattan. 

VIII 

Enters English house of commons — Works for Catholic eman- 
cipation — His last speech — Health fails — Retires to Tinnehinch — i 
Determines to return to London for last effort — Forbidden by 
physicians — Painful journey to London — Death. 

IX 

Grattan at home — Tinnehinch — His associates — In society — 
Love of the country — Love of music — As a conversationalist — 
Love of the theater — Fondness for his friends. 



As an orator— Physical disadvantages — His art — Method of 
preparing speeches — Partiality for the epigram — His imagery-^ 
Power of condensation — His rhetorical sentences — Power of de- 
nunciation — Attack on Flood — Defense of Doctor Kirwin — Trib- 
ute to Charlemont — Felicity of characterization — Illustrations — 
His perorations — His status. 

Chapter III. John Philpot Curran Paqe 127 



Parents of Curran— His boyhood at Newmarket— At Trinity 
—At the Middle Temple — Influence of London — His life there 
— His poverty — His oratorical studies. 

ii 

Returns to Dublin — Enters parliament— Supports the Volun- 
teers—Duel with Lord Clare— He assails corruption— Supports 
parliamentary reform— Retires from parliament— Reasons he 
gave Phillips in later life. 

hi 

Curran becomes the advocate of Ireland— The anarchy and 
corruption of the courts— He defends Rowan— Scenes in the 
court room— Military display— His speech— Demonstration of the 
spectators— Carried home by the crowd— Attempt of the Castle 
to divorce Curran from the patriots— Defends Jackson— Court 
lets down the bars for informers— Defends Finnerty— The case 
of Orr— He declares that jury is packed— His speech— "The 



CONTENTS— Continued 

state of Ireland" — Defense of Finney — O'Brien, the informer — 
Curran's denunciation of O'Brien — Acquits Finney — Rebellion of 
'98 — Curran becomes the man of the hour — He defends the 
Sheares brothers — Scenes in court — Brutality of the court — Cur- 
ran's speech — He defends McCann — Reynolds, the informer — 
Curran's speech suppressed — Defends Byrne — Reynolds again — 
Defends Bond — Attempt to intimidate Curran by soldiery— -"You 
may assassinate, you shall not intimidate me" — Denunciation of 
Reynolds — Curran threatened with assassination — Is followed by 
hired ruffians — Government fears to arrest him — Effect of state 
trials on his spirits — Attempt to save Wolfe Tone — Case of Her- 
vey vs. Sirr — Curran's speech shocks English by^ revelations — 
Edinburgh Review's admission — He defends Justice Johnson — 
Again shocks England — Appointed master of the rolls. 

IV 

Curran's social genius — "Monks of the Screw" — His home, 
The Priory — His melancholy — Social triumphs in London — By- 
ron's tribute to Curran's genius — Curran and Sheridan — Curran 
and Erskine — Curran's opinion of Fox, Sheridan and Doctor 
Johnson — Last years — Stricken at Tom Moore's table — Death. 



His wonderful eloquence — Publication of his speeches — Ex- 
planation of their exaggerations — "Greatest orator produced by 
the British Isles" — Physical disadvantages — His eyes and voice 
— Power over the emotions — His vocabulary — Manner of prepar- 
ing speeches — His notes for the Rowan speech — His inspirational 
qualities — His pathetic description of the fate of Orr — His ap- 
peal to Lord Avonmore — His humor — His gift of satire — His 
ridicule of Doctor Duigenan — His word picture of an informer 
— His place in the Irish heart. 

Chapter IV. Lord Plunkett Page 168 



Reverend Thomas Plunkett — Lord Plunkett's early associa- 
tions — At Dublin University — In the Historical Society — In the 
gallery of house of commons — Legal preparations in London — 
The frivolity of Dublin — Professional success — Enters parlia- 
ment at behest of Charlemont. 

ii 

Enters parliament to fight the union — The corruption of par- 
liament — The pensioners and placemen — Analysis of house of 
commons in 1798 — Castlereagh takes charge of corruption con- 
spiracy — Character of Castlereagh — Pitt's plan to aid the union— i 



CONTENTS— Continued 

Personnel of the patriots — Ministry attacks the patriot press^ 
Plunkett defends it — Rebellion of '98— Government refuses in- 
quiry into cause of discontent — Parliament packed for the union 
— Castlereagh's minion, Cook, issues pamphlet advocating union 
— Plunkett and the patriots reply — Plunkett's plan of defense — 
First debate begins on the address — Attempt to intimidate and 
silence the patriots — Plunkett's defiance — His first great speech 
— His denunciation of Castlereagh — Government defeated by one 
— Castle determines on intimidation — Unionist Dueling Club 
formed — Plunkett organizes similar club — Castlereagh adjourns 
parliament to strengthen forces — Cornwallis' union electioneering 
tour — Patriots force the fighting at beginning of parliament— Doc- 
tor Brown's apostacy by purchase — Plunkett's open denunciation 
of Brown — His brilliant speech against the union — Castlereagh 
gets what he bought — The union consummated — Effect of the 
tragedy on Plunkett — His drift away from Ireland — Enters Eng- 
lish parliament — Steers Emancipation bill through the lords. 



in 

Plunkett made chancellor of Ireland — Thrown over by his 
English friends — Retires to home in Old Connaught — Last days 
and death — His greatness as an orator — Imposing presence — * 
Facial advantages — His gestures — His voice — Bulwer Lytton's 
tribute — His style — His figures — His invective — Philippic against 
Castlereagh — Denunciation of Cornwallis' tour — Ireland's debt to 
Plunkett. 

Chapter V. Robert Emmet ........ Page 204 

i 

Mystery of Emmet's career — The Emmet family — Emmet's 
early schooling — Brilliancy at Trinity — His remarkable eloquence 
— Nervousness of government — Approaching crisis in Ireland — - 
His appearance at Trinity — Amazing tribute to his college 
speeches — His discussion of politics in the debating society — He 
fires the patriotism of the students — Defends the French Revolu- 
tion — Government sends old man to answer him — Government 
expels students suspected of treasonable doctrines — Emmet sum- 
moned before Lord Clare — Refuses to turn informer and leaves 
Trinity — Espouses principles of United Irishmen — Tom Moore's 
story — Becomes revolutionist. 

II 

Emmet leaves for the continent — Indicted but not arrested — • 
Mystery of the government's attitude — His life in Paris — Myths 
and mysteries about his movements — Interviews Napoleon and 
Talleyrand — Studies military tactics — Ireland ruled bloodily with 
iron hand — Mystery of his return to Ireland — Who sent him the 
false hope?— The papers in Dublin Castle — The letter of Pitt— 






CONTENTS— Continued 

Did the government foment the rising of 1803? — Disappearance 
of the papers from the Castle — Emmet's optimism and enthusiasm 
on return. 

Ill 

Emmet's appearance at this time— Surrounded by spies — Con- 
verts his fortune into money — Establishes depots and buys ammu- 
nition — The succession of blunders — The mystery of these — The 
premature rising — The march on the Castle — The accession of the 
rabble — Murder of Kilwarden — Emmet makes his escape. 

IV 

Emmet in the Wicklow hills — His love for Sarah Curran — • 
The love-story — Returns to bid Sarah farewell — Betrayed by an 
informer — Brutality of the authorities — The later life of Sarah 
Curran. 

V 

The trial of Emmet — Norbury — Scene in the court room — ■ 
Emmet's speech from the dock — The flickering lamp — The sen- 
tence — The veiled woman — The government issues garbled re- 
port of Emmet's speech — The journey to the scaffold — The exe- 
cution. 

Chapter VI. Daniel O'Connell ....... Page 237 



O'Connell's ancestry — His birth — Babyhood in the Iveragh 
mountains — His precocity — Youth in Kerry — At Saint Omer's — 
Flight from the French Revolution — Early studies and mental 
processes — His journal — His morbid ambition — His relation to 
the rebellion of '98 — Effect upon him of the union — He places 
Irish Catholics on record against it. 

II 

O'Connell assumes leadership of Catholics in emancipation 
fight — He overthrows the conservatives — He favors agitation — ■ 
His speech advocating it — Leads the fight against the securities — '■ 
His speech at Limerick — Not regretful over defeat of Relief 
bill of 1813 containing securities — Reply to Councilor Bellew's 
defense of securities — Mendacity of Bellew — Sheil becomes cham- 
pion of securities — Aristocracy favors them — O'Connell organ- 
izes the masses against them — Monsignor Quarantotti acquiesces 
■ — O'Connell repudiates his advice — Irish prelates support his po- 
sition. 

hi 

O'Connell enlists services of liberal Protestants — Entrusts 
preparation of petition to parliament to one of them — His trib- 



CONTENTS— Continued 

tites to Protestant supporters at public dinners— He urges Irish 
support for Protestant Irish industries — His speech — Protects his 
people against the law — Insists on constitutional methods — Warns 
people against seditious organizations — Conciliates differences 
among Catholics — His method of doing it — Government _ sup- 
presses Catholic board — O'Connell appeals to Sheil to join in 
organizing Catholic association. 

IV 

Shell's former enmity to O'Connell — O'Connell refuses to 
quarrel with friends of Ireland — Above envy — Tributes to Grat- 
tan, Plunkett and others who opposed him — He meets Sheil in 
1823 and the organization is determined upon. 






First meeting of the association — O'Connell's plan to organize 
the masses — He unites all elements — Arouses the country with 
fiery speeches — Issues declaration of war on government — His 
speech — Association meetings resemble national parliament — 
O'Connell lashes country into storm — His "mob oratory" — He 
hints at revolution — The government alarmed — It puts the asso- 
ciation down — O'Connell perfects another — Relief bill of 1825 
defeated in the lords — Duke of York's part — Duke's bigoted 
speech printed by Orangemen — Mass meeting called — O'Connell's 
speech — He warns the government — He conjures with the Amer- 
ican revolution — He decides to manifest his power — He organ- 
izes defeat of Lord Beresford in a by-election — Decides to chal- 
lenge the law excluding Catholics from parliament — Runs for 
Clare — Spectacular contest — Is elected — Excitement in London — 
O'Connell the uncrowned king — Government surrenders — Eman- 
cipation bill passes — Petty proviso excludes O'Connell — Is re- 
elected. 

VI 

O'Connell's world-wide repute — Voted for for the Belgian 
throne — Hated by king of England — Admired by Palmerson — • 
Cultivated by Disraeli — O'Connell's parliamentary attitude — His 
mind on the repeal of the union — He plans long fight — Restrains 
impatience of the people — Relief breakfasts outlawed in Dublin 
— Arrest of O'Connell a fiasco — Coercion act of 1833 — O'Con- 
nell's fight against it — He originates obstruction — His denuncia- 
tion of English misrule — The general election — O'Connell's plan 
to make the Irish a factor — Fights the Tories because of the 
coercion act — Topples over the Peel ministry — His alliance with 
the Whigs — The historic meeting at Lord Russell's — O'Connell's 
sarcastic attack on Lord Liverpool — Attempt to expel O'Connell 
from Brooks— The Irish Corporation Reform bill— O'Connell's 
Anchor Tavern speech — His defiance of the house — He announces 
the Irish program — Decides to give the Whigs a chance — Olive 



CONTENTS— Continued 

branch declined — O'Connell compares records of crimes in Ire- 
land and England — Speech — The lords emasculate the Municipal 
Corporation bill — O'Connell declares battle — The Dublin repeal 
speech — O'Connell turns to the masses again. 

VII 

Organizes the Repeal Association — The "Monster Meetings" 
— O'Connell at Cork — The demonstration at Limerick — Character 
of his speeches — The Repeal Cavalry — Character of the meetings 
— Attempts to assassinate O'Connell — Attacks on his reputation — 
Lord Greville's defense — Government threatens armed forces 
— O'Connell's defiance — Peel's alarm — The meeting at Tara — 
Bulwer's description — O'Connell crowned at Mullaghmast — His 
speech — His tribute to Kildare — Draws plans for Irish parliament 
— The Clontarf proscription — The infamy of it— The arrest of 
O'Connell. 

VIII 

O'Connell's triumphant appearance at court — The packed jury 
— Lecky's poor excuse— Canned conviction — The verdict shocks 
the world — O'Connell given ovation in parliament — Sentenced to 
prison — Multitudes accompany him to prison gates — House of 
lords reverse the verdict — Accompanied home by thousands — His 
health broken — The famine of '47 — O'Connell pleads for his 
starving people — Starts to Rome — His death at Geneva. 

IX 

O'Connell at Darrynane — The surroundings — His life there — 
His lordly hospitality — Attitude toward dependents — His hunting 
—His sentimental side — His letter to Landor — Life in Dublin — 
His religious nature — His retreat at Mount Melleray Abbey. 



O'Connell as an orator — Randolph's opinion — Duvergier's — 
Wendell Phillips' — First great British popular orator — "The ver- 
dict is the thing" — His "mob oratory" — Used the big canvas — His 
knowledge of human nature — Strength alone considered — A 
poet's description of 0[Connell in action — His physical advan- 
tages — His gestures — His powerful invective — Some characteri- 
zations — Master of pathos — His use of Gaelic. 

Chapter VII. Thomas Francis Meagher .... Page 328 



Meagher's birth— His life at Waterford— College in Kildare 
—At Stonyhurst College — At Queen's Inn, Dublin — Dublin so- 
ciety in 1844— The repeal orators. 



CONTENTS— Continued 

ii 

Meagher becomes member parliamentary committee, Repeal 
Association — O'Brien discovers his genius — Meagher becomes one 
of repeal orators — His first speech in Conciliation Hall — The 
speech — Hailed as the new spokesman — Conditions in Ireland — 
Dissatisfaction over the Whig alliance — Mitchell's protest — Apos- 
tacy of Sheil — The break of Young Ireland with O'Connell — A 
spectacular meeting in Conciliation Hall — Meagher's "Sword 
Speech"— Effect on the audience — Lady Wilde's tribute. 

in 

Young Islanders driven out — O'Connell invites them back — \ 
John O'Connell, trouble maker — Irish Confederation born — The 
famine — The fires of patriotism fanned by militancy — Growth of 
the Confederation — Its parliamentary plans — Mitchell scorns all 
methods but force — Meagher's views — His speech — Is marked for 
slaughter by the Castle — He stands for parliamentary seat for 
Waterford — His father's opposition — His militant campaign 
speeches — The vote — Young Ireland hails the French Revolution 
of '48 — The celebration — Meagher's militant speech — Arrested 
with Mitchell and O'Brien for sedition — Ireland in revolt — • 
Meagher's speech from a window — He takes the address to 
France. 

IV 

Preparations for rebellion in Ireland — David Hyland, pike- 
maker — The government's cat and mouse policy — Meagher be- 
gins a campaign tour — The mob at Limerick — Meagher's seditious 
speech — The trial of Meagher — A hung jury — Mitchell's trial — • 
The conviction — The proposed rescue — The formal conspiracy — i 
The revolutionary committee — Meagher arrested at Waterford 
— He prevents a rescue — Exciting trip to Dublin — The cheering 
multitudes — Gives bond — Starts south to arouse the people — The 
meeting on Slievenamon Mountain — Meagher's speech — Govern- 
ment calls on the people to disarm — Meagher countermands the 
order. 

v 

Young Ireland prepares for war — The committee of public 
safety — The final meeting — Mistakes and blunders — Arrest of the 
leaders — Meagher's trial and conviction — His speech from the 
dock. 

VI 

Meagher in the No-Man's-Land — His escape to America — His 
lectures — His part in the Civil War — The Irish Brigade — Ap- 
pointed acting governor of Montana — His death. 

VII 

As an orator—His physical advantages — His fire and passion 
— A master of invective — His denunciation of the lords — His 



CONTENTS— Continued 

denunciation of England for imprisoning O'Brien — The lyrical 
qualities of his speeches — His prose poems — "By the soft blue 
waters of Lake Lucerne" — "The spirit that nerved the Red Hand 
of Ulster" — His word pictures — His poetic fancy — His surprise 
stingers. 

Chapter VIII. Isaac Butt ........ Page 373 



Butt's early Ulster days — Parents — Career at Trinity — He 
founds the Dublin University Magazine — His literary efforts — 
His work in the Historical Society — Professor of political econ- 
omy — His lectures on the Land problem — Early success at the 
bar — His early political affiliations — Darling of the Tories — Is put 
forward to answer O'Connell — His appearance at the time. 

ii 

Butt writes for English conservative papers — Prosperous days 
— His lordly convivial habits — O'Brien's Recollections — Butt's 
money difficulties — He defends Smith O'Brien — Pie enters parlia- 
ment as a conservative — His rollicking days in London — His 
wine bibbling — A story of a creditor — Bankruptcy — Defeated for 
parliament — Returns to his profession in Dublin. 

in 

The militant spirit in Ireland — The Fenian Brotherhood— 1 
Conditions favorable to it — The leaders — James Stephens — Luby 
and O'Leary — The Irish People — Charles Joseph Kickman — 
O'Donovan Rossa — John Devoy — Raid on the paper — Arrests for 
treason-felony — Butt takes charge of defense — Historic sig- 
nificance — The trials — The packed juries — The informers — Butt's 
brilliant defense work — Stephens escapes prison — Luby's trial — : 
Butt protests against military display — He takes every constitu- 
tional privilege — The judge reverses the British law — Butt de- 
fends militancy — His speech — His failures — The succeeding trials 
for high treason — Butt's spirited defense — His tribute to Fenians 
— He denounces the court — His speech — He charges the British 
government with perjury — His denunciation — His defense of 
Flood — One law for England, another for Ireland — Butt's 
speech — The mockery of the trials — The Manchester martyrs — 
Injustice converts Butt into an Irish patriot. 

IV 

Government's torture of Fenian prisoners — The case of Rossa 
*-|-Butt aroused — He organizes the Amnesty Association — He pe- 
titions Gladstone for the release of the Fenians — He organizes 
nionster mass meetings over Ireland — Addresses two hundred 



CONTENTS— Continued 

thousand at Cabra fields— His public letter to Gladstone— His 
tribute to character of the Fenians — His description of the 
Cabra meeting— Warns Gladstone of Irish feeling— Rossa 
elected to parliament— News carried to Gladstone — Butt's final 
success — Ireland's debt to Fenianism. 



Butt reenters parliament— His new character — Aims at repeal 
of the union — He organizes the Home-Rule movement — Appeals 
for Fenian help— The dinner at Hood's Hotel— Butt's speech-^ 
O'Brien destroys his notes— The election of 1874 — Desperate 
straits of the Irish party— Butt's pitiful situation— Pursued by 
bankruptcy messengers — Makes brave fight — Personnel of the 
party— Butt's idea of Home Rule— O'Donnell's definition — Butt's 
leadership— How it differed from Parnell's— His Home-Rule 
speech — The effect — Its wide distribution — Result of his gentle- 
manly tactics — His interest in the land question — Writes on the 
subject — Exposes uselessness of Land Act of 1870 — Writes The 
Irish People and Irish Land — His description of the parting of 
emigrants — English mockery — Butt tries modest obstruction — 
People lose faith — Butt's promise at Queenstown — His creditors 
— Is forced to practise law — Burning the candle at both ends — 
Displaced as the head of the Home-Rule Confederation — His 
last appearance — His death. 

VI 

Butt's lovable nature — As an orator — His power over juries — ■ 
His mastery of pathos — His picture of an evicted family — The 
manner in which he prepared his speeches — Devoy's story — Butt's 
last word to Ireland. 



Chapter IX. Charles Stewart Parnell .... Page 424 



Parnell's parentage — Avonmore — His childhood — Boyish ha- 
tred of the English — In English schools — At Cambridge — His 
lack of ambition — Fanny Parnell — The Fenians — The raid on his 
mother's house — The Manchester martyrs — The vote by ballot 
reform — Parnell becomes ambitious — He stands for parliament — 
The Dublin failure — Elected for Meath — The coldness of the 
party leaders — Parnell's lack of preparation — His ignorance of 
Irish history. 

II 

Biggar's first obstruction speech — Effect on Parnell — Studies 
the field — "I must ask some questions" — Shocks the house by 
defense of Manchester martyrs — Attracts attention of the Fe- 
nians — He carries the Nationalists' message to President Grant 



CONTENTS— Continued 

~His Liverpool speech — He cultivates the Irish in England — His 
plan to harmonize all Irish elements — Resorts to obstruction on 
the Mutiny and Prison bills — His obstruction methods — The 
fury of the English — Butt repudiates Parnell's tactics — Parnell's 
reply — The radicals rally to Parnell — He explains in his Man- 
chester speech — Bids for Fenian support — He fights the South 
African bill with obstruction — Harcourt denounces him — Excit- 
ing scenes — The Fenian discovery — Ireland united again. 

in 

Parnell and the Fenians — Declines to join the Brotherhood — ■ 
Encourages Fenian activity — His strength with the American 
Clan-na-Gaels — Michael Davitt — John Devoy — Plan to arouse the 
Irish farmers — Devoy's proposal of an alliance — Tenant defense 
associations — Wholesale evictions — Parnell's attitude — "Keep a 
firm hold on your homesteads" — The government's alarm — The 
revolutionary meeting at Limerick — Parnell's advice to tenants — 
Ireland aroused — Parnell heads the Land League — The Land 
League protest meetings — The arrest of Davitt — Parnell's de- 
fiance — His American tour — Irish- American dollars — Parnell's 
speeches — The general election — Parnell's campaign — He helps 
the liberals to win. 

IV 

Parnell in opposition — Holds aloof from English parties — 
Condition of tenants — Parnell presents bill to stay evictions — And 
to grant compensation — It passes the commons — Defeated by the 
lords — War declared — Riots over Ireland — Parnell's message at 
Ennis — He advocates the boycott — The enthusiastic response — 
The growth of the league — Patrick Ford — Outrages on tenants — 
The reign of terror — The Land League versus the government — 
Parnell skirts sedition — He is arrested — His contempt of the pro- 
ceedings — The prosecution fails — The Coercion bill — Parnell's 
spectacular fight — Prisons filled — Gladstone alarmed — His Land 
Reform bill — Parnell's attitude — His diplomacy — The Irish party 
fails to vote— Parnell proposes for league to review cases — Is 
bitterly assailed — Gladstone's denunciation — Parnell's reply at 
Wexford — He challenges the government — The challenge ac- 
cepted — Parnell is arrested-^'Captain Moonlight." 

v 

Parnell at Kilmainham prison — Anarchy in Ireland — Glad- 
stone alarmed — At the mercy of Parnell — "The Kilmainham 
treaty" — Parnell released — The liberal split — The Phoenix Park 
murders — Effect on Parnell — Coercion again — Gladstone keeps 
the treaty. 

VI 

Forster's attack on Parnell — Parnell's contemptuous reply—* 
Seditious conditions in Ireland — "Down with Gladstone" — Par- 



CONTENTS— Continued 

nell determines to force the crisis — He plays with Gladstone, 
Churchill and Chamberlain — The fall of Gladstone — "Remember 
Coercion" — Tories in power on Irish suffrance — Morley's taunt 
— Parnell extorts concessions — The elections — Parnell's keynote — 
He demands Home Rule — English indignation — Parnell's threat 
— Flirting with the Irish — Gladstone sends feeler — Parnell coaxes 
him on — G. O. M. too coy — Parnell denounces liberals — Parnell 
holds balance of power. 

VII 

Parnell serves notice of use of power — Tories lose interest — ■ 
Churchill's cynical remark — Gladstone negotiates — He submits 
proposition to Parnell — Is accepted — The Tories fall — The 
Home-Rule Bill of 1886 — Parnell's management — Morley's de- 
scription — Ulster up — Gladstone's troubles with liberal rebels — 
Chamberlain's treachery — Bright's desertion — Parnell's speech — • 
The government defeated — The spectacular election — Gladstone 
champions Irish cause on hustings — Salisbury returns to power 
— Parnell pushes another land act — Is defeated — Turmoil in Ire- 
land — Coercion again — The packing of the prisons — Gladstone 
fights fiercely for Home Rule — Parnell's game. 

VIII 

The Irish question in English politics — The Times libels — 
"Parnellism and Crime" — The Pigott forgery — The expose — 
Pigott's suicide — Parnell's vindication — His ovation in the house 
> — The Home-Rule prospect — The approaching election — The di- 
vorce case — Gladstone demands Parnell's retirement — Committee 
Room 15 — Redmond's demand — McCarthy leads out a majority 
— The split. 

IX 

Parnell determines to fight — Feverish activity on hustings — 
Lonesome night in Dublin — Failing health— His sudden death 
— Parnell's status — His complex personality— His superstitions— 
His love of animals — His treatment of his tenants — Gladstone's 
tribute. 

X 

Parnell as a speaker — His voice — Secret of platform successes 
f— Personal appearance — Redmond's explanation of Parnell's suc- 
cesses — Gladstone's view — Morley's tribute — Parnell's passion for 
the one right word — His nervous dread of crowds — His Amer- 
ican speeches. 

Chapter X. The Last Quarter of a Century — 

1891-1912 Page 507 

Bibliography . Page 513 

Index . Page 519 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



HENRY FLOOD 

The Fight for the Control of the Purse-strings by the Irish 

Parliament; Beginnings of Systematic Corruption of 

Parliament; the Fight for Simple Repeal; the 

Story of the Volunteers; the Battle 

for Parliamentary Reform 

THE period immediately preceding the activity of 
Dean Swift was one of utter darkness and hope- 
lessness in Ireland. The parliament of the people — 
if such a parliament could be charged to any portion 
of the people — was verily a "den of thieves"where 
the interests of Ireland were sacrificed upon the altar 
of place and pelf. Without the walls of the parlia- 
ment house, all was darkness. The people manifested 
not the slightest concern regarding the political poli- 
cies through which they were governed. There was 
no such thing as public opinion ; scarcely such a thing 
as a patriotic passion. Ireland was dormant and al- 
most dead. 

And then came Swift with his vitriolic pen to lash 
the rascals of the parliament house, to shame the 
people out of their apathy and to create a healthful 
public opinion upon which might have been built a mil- 
itant patriotic party. But the death of the satirist left 
Ireland without a leader and she gradually fell into a 

1 



2 THE IRISH ORATORS 

dismal drowse. The years that followed were dreary 
enough. The people themselves seemed to have lost 
all sense of self-respect. The dominating power across 
the channel treated them with the contempt which 
their indifference merited. The parliament became a 
mere toy — a plaything of the minister. It was reduced 
to utter impotency. Even the viceroy credited to 
Dublin disdained to dwell within the Castle, and, after 
a formal entry upon his duties, it was his custom to 
hurry back to the more congenial atmosphere of the 
court. However, he did not wholly neglect the 
government. He found his residential agents in 
members of parliament who came to be known as 
Undertakers from the fact that they stipulated, in con- 
sideration of pension and place and patronage, to un- 
dertake the business of carrying out the policies of the 
minister. In time the parliament degenerated into an 
insipid company of hucksters. No one cared to protest 
against the humiliation of the country. Not a voice 
was raised in behalf of the liberty of the land. The 
story of this period of Ireland is recorded on the most 
bleak and barren pages of her history. 

At length — a miracle! A voice of protest within 
the house of commons awakened languid curiosity. 
The Undertakers yawned, stretched themselves and 
smiled. Occasionally this voice wavered and broke. 
This was reassuring. It made no impression upon the 
great inert mass without the halls of parliament. 
Within, it was as the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness and with no answer but a cry. It was the voice 
of Anthony Malone, perhaps the first great orator of 
Ireland, a man of marvelous mentality, amazing elo- 
quence and unimpeachable integrity. Unfortunately 



HENRY FLOOD 3 

his great parliamentary speeches were delivered before 
the days of permanent records, and his reputation rests 
very largely upon the tributes of his contemporaries. 
Standing alone, he accomplished little. His methods 
were strictly constitutional and his admonitions were 
confined to the "den of thieves." 

Then appeared — The Man. 

One day during the closing period of the reign of 
George II, a brilliant and dashing young man of the 
aristocracy, whose eloquence suggested the command- 
ing genius of Lord Chatham, took his seat in the Irish 
house of commons. He looked beyond the parliament 
house with its miserable pensioners and saw the peo- 
ple of Ireland sleeping in their chains. He had the 
audacity of an iconoclast. He determined to bring to 
bear upon the placemen of parliament the stinging lash 
of an aroused public opinion. He proposed a program 
of radical reforms. Lie urged it with an eloquence 
that shook the parliament and echoed across the chan- 
nel where it beat against the walls of Saint Stephens. 
He reiterated it with such persistency that he disturbed 
the slumbers of the sleeping thousands and they awoke 
to a sense of their national humiliation and to a 
realization of their rights. He created public opinion 
— and through this he made a party, a party of virile 
opposition. This was the beginning of the nation. 
And this epic figure was the first of the heroic charac- 
ters that have been fighting the battle of Irish inde- 
pendence up to the present hour. Mistakes he made, 
no doubt, and sometimes, alas, his course was tortuous 
and seemingly inconsistent, but in the history of Ire- 
land few names will shine more luminously in the day 
of her triumph than that of Henry Flood. 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



It was in the sixteenth century that a gay and dash' 
ing ancestor of Henry Flood left his home in Kent, 
and, at the head of his troops, marched into Ireland 
and established a family. After the fashion of the 
invader he was soon numbered among the aristocracy. 
One of his sons became chief justice of the king's 
bench and lived the lordly life of a gentleman. Appre- 
ciating the privileges of an aristocrat he appears to 
have been a trifle unconventional in his wooing, and 
unfortunately, if tradition is to be credited, his first 
son, Henry Flood, born in 1732, made something of a 
premature appearance in the world. Being the only 
child and the heir to a great estate he was carefully 
trained to play his part becomingly in the fashionable 
world to which he was destined by birth. While his 
biographers are silent regarding his preliminary educa- 
tion, his admission to Trinity College in his sixteenth 
year justifies the assumption that it was thorough. 
Hardly had he settled down to his studies when his 
precocity manifested itself in a disposition to live up 
to the reputation of his ancestors, and we find him en- 
tering with the keenest zest into the fashions and 
frivolity of the capital, draining his cup with an aban- 
don that would have reflected credit upon the founder 
of the Irish branch of the family. There was ample 
opportunity in the Dublin of those days for dissipa- 
tion, and an early indication that the future orator's 
conception of education was that of a man of the 
world, impelled his father hurriedly to transfer him to 
Oxford, where temptations were not so alluring. 

It was in the classic halls of the great university that 






HENRY FLOOD 5 

his ambition was aroused. He was fortunate in being 
placed under the supervision of Doctor Markham, 
afterward Archbishop of York, and during the two 
years of his life in Oxford he applied himself to his 
studies with the greatest diligence. While at Trinity 
he had found that his native ingenuity gave him an 
easy advantage over his fellow students and this had 
encouraged him to neglect his books. Nothing per- 
haps did more to wean him away from this dangerous 
tendency to rest upon his oars than his association 
with men of intellectual brilliancy at Oxford. We 
find him turning as if by instinct to such studies as 
were fitted to prepare him for public life. He turned 
eagerly to mathematics and the study of philosophy 
to stimulate his reasoning faculties. He became profi- 
cient in the classics. He translated the Greek and Ro- 
man poets and the masterpieces of the ancient orators. 
His favorite among the poets appears to have been 
Pindar, from whom he translated several odes. He 
pored over the histories of the ancient republics and 
became familiar with their struggles for liberty and the 
great characters who led and dominated their policies. 
In view of the frequent comparisons between the con- 
cise and nervous style which characterized him in the 
prime of his power and the style of Demosthenes it is 
interesting to know that he learned the oration on the 
Crown by heart. His efforts at composition during 
this period were not confined to prose. We have still 
extant several of his verses, but they contribute noth- 
ing to his fame. He appears to have left Oxford in 
his twenty-first year with a mind well stored and a 
style well formed for disputation. 
Upon this graduation he entered the Temple to 



6 THE IRISH ORATORS 

study law, and, while his biographers rather depreciate 
his work here, some of his speeches in later years, in 
which he displayed a remarkable familiarity with the 
constitution and the fundamentals of jurisprudence, 
would indicate that the time devoted to the Temple 
was not entirely lost. 

When after a seven years' sojourn in England he 
returned to his native isle and plunged precipitately 
into public life he faced a roseate future. His famib 
position and his acquirements and convivial tastes 
would have made it an easy matter for him to have 
become one of the darlings of the Castle. He was a 
young man of striking appearance. His slender figure 
was exceedingly graceful and he had the manner of 
the polished courtier. His face, dominated by strong 
eagle-like eyes, was said to have been remarkably 
handsome. His conversational cleverness marked him 
for social distinction. His popularity was great 
with all classes, for, notwithstanding his aristocratic 
origin, he was always democratic in his manner and 
associations. And yet, withal, there was something 
of dignity about his bearing which set him apart from 
the crowd. 

Such was Henry Flood when he entered the Irish 
house of commons in his twenty-seventh year as a 
member for Kilkenny. The situation confronting 
the ardent young statesman who had imbibed copiously 
of the lessons of Greek and Roman freedom must 
have seemed appalling. The country was in dire need 
of a popular constitution to define her rights. The 
parliament was absolutely powerless to act and was 
merely a parliament in name. Its principal function 
>vas to listen to the plausible address of the viceroy 



HENRY FLOOD 7 

and return a servile compliance in the lofty language 
of sycophancy, Its members might meet unmolested, 
might even venture to discuss the measures of the 
crown, and at times might even vote against them — 
but whatever it did was completely inoperative without 
the sanction of the power across the channel. No bill 
could have its origin in the Irish parliament until con- 
sent had been given by the deputy and the privy coun- 
cil. This toy law-making body was graciously accorded 
the privilege of submitting bills to its master which 
could be either wholly rejected or amended out of all 
recognition. Looking over the personnel of the body 
with which he was associated, Flood could find but one 
on whom he could rely in any attempt at reformation, 
and Anthony Malone was growing old and the fires 
of his genius that once burned so brightly were flicker- 
ing now. True, Doctor Lucas had given unmistakable 
proof of a unique patriotism, but he was powerful only 
in the strength of the principles he proclaimed. The 
great mass of the members were pensioners, partakers 
of the bounty of the Castle, Undertakers in the shame- 
ful work of national humiliation. 

The first four years of Flood's parliamentary career 
were barren of biographical data, since no attempt was 
made to report the debates until 1763. There are rea- 
i sons to believe that Flood at first abstained from par- 
ticipation in the debates and devoted himself to a 
> study of the usages of the house. His first appearance 
: on the floor grew out of the motion that Portugal, 
then at war with Spain, be permitted to raise a regi- 
ment of Catholics in Ireland. In opposing the motion 
Flood made an eloquent and startlingly severe attack 
on the whole administration of the government and 



8 THE IRISH ORATORS 






called down upon his head the bitter resentment of the 
ministry while winning the approbation of the public. 
The first authentic record of his entrance into the de- 
bate was on October 12, 1763, when he stunned the 
house with a brilliant speech of sarcasm and invective 
aimed directly at the corruption of the members. This 
speech marked an epoch. Lucas had preached princi- 
ples to ears of stone, and Malone had spoken of the 
principles of liberty to ears that refused to understand, 
but no one, up to this time, had dared stand in the 
Irish parliament and point an accusing finger at the 
fatal defect in the Irish institution. If this speech 
created concern among the beneficiaries of the "sys- 
tem," Flood's second philippic delivered less than a 
month afterward and directed at the pensioning policy 
of the Castle, caused something akin to consternation. 
It served notice on the government that in the elo- 
quent young aristocrat it had found a man with whom 
it would have to reckon after a fashion then unknown 
in Irish administration. 

Through the persistency of his opposition and the 
boldness of his assaults upon the corruption of the 
times, Flood gradually made inroads on the strength 
of the Undertakers, and created an interest in the pro- 
ceedings of parliament on the part of the people. He 
soon established the reputation of being the most 
eloquent man that Ireland had produced. He had in- 
troduced into the Irish parliament that rhetorical elo- 
quence which was then in full flower in Saint Stephens. 
He had created animosities on the part of the pen- 
sioners that pursued him through life and then perse- 
cuted his memory. During this period he made no 
effort to create a party. He was engaged in shattering 





Henry Flood 

Taken from a painting by Commerford in the possession of the 
University of Dublin 



HENRY FLOOD 9 

the power of the Undertakers and in arousing that 
public opinion upon which he was to lean so heavily in 
his battles of the future. He had made many ardent 
friends and admirers upon whom he could depend in 
any organized fight he might determine to make. 

During these preliminary years he was diverted for 
a season from his parliamentary labor through his 
marriage to a lady of great fortune, and for a time he 
retired from politics and sought pleasure in agricul- 
tural pursuits at Farmley. This period was also a 
period of preparation. It gave him time for reflection 
and for the further cultivation of his natural and ac- 
quired talents. His home became the rendezvous of 
some of the most brilliant men that Ireland has pro- 
duced. He surrounded himself with celebrities of the 
political and literary world and it is here that we first 
learn of his association with Henry Grattan and Sir 
Hercules Langrishe. A great intimacy grew up be- 
tween them. They discussed politics and studied ora- 
tory as assiduously as youths, writing and exchang- 
ing their compositions for the purposes of criticism, 
and even entering into formal disputations after the 
manner of a debating society. No doubt the eloquence 
of these wonderful men which shone so brilliantly a 
few years later was burnished during these Attic 
nights and days in the rural seclusion of Farmley. 
And possibly something of grace and effectiveness was 
imparted to the dramatic phases of their delivery by 
the private theatricals with which they amused them- 
selves. What a fascinating picture some artist would 
have handed down to posterity could he have caught 
them at the hour when Flood was playing Macbeth to 
Grattan's Macduff! The idyllic life at Farmley how- 



10 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ever could not continue long for one of Flood's nerv- 
ous energy and feverish ambition, and he soon turned 
his back, a little sadly perhaps, but permanently, upon 
the joys of domesticity to plunge with renewed energy 
into the parliamentary battles of Dublin. 

II 

When the Marquis of Townsend was sent over to 
Ireland as viceroy in 1767, Henry Flood began his 
systematic agitation for the amelioration of the condi- 
tion and the righting of the wrongs of his country. 
When the vain easy-going viceroy took up his resi- 
dence at the Castle he was forty-three years old, and 
while he had had no political experience he had fought 
at Fontenoy, and had attempted, with some degree of 
success, to steal the laurels of Wolfe at the battle of 
Quebec. His family connections in England were the 
most distinguished. His intentions were probably the 
best. His very indifference to the dignity of his posi- 
tion gave promise of conciliating the masses, and his 
determination to make his home in Dublin, standing 
out in striking contrast to the policy of his predeces- 
sors, was expected to enhance his popularity. He was 
a man of the most convivial habits and in the Dublin 
of that day the heavy drinker had a certain advantage 
in society. Aside from an irritating tendency to scrib- 
ble satires upon friend and foe alike there was very 
little about him, seen superficially, to justify the ex- 
pectation that he would leave Ireland one of the most 
thoroughly hated rulers that ever occupied the Castle. 
The program that he was expected to carry out did not 
appear difficult of achievement by the ministry, since 



HENRY FLOOD 11 

it embraced features that were expected to meet with 
the hearty approbation of the people. He proposed to 
augment the military establishment by increasing the 
number of soldiers from twelve thousand to fifteen 
thousand; to place the tenure of judges upon a consti- 
tutional basis, and to secure a limitation to the life of 
a parliament. A hasty survey of the field, however, 
soon convinced him that the governmental measures 
could not be carried without a struggle. The country 
was already sensitive on the subject of the army, and 
the aristocratic party, popularly known as the Under- 
takers, had found the continuation of a parliament 
throughout a reign highly profitable and satisfactory. 
In preparing to push the Augmentation bill, the mar- 
quis soon saw that unless he could conciliate the lead- 
ing members of the aristocratic party he was doomed 
to failure; and it is claimed by J. R. Fisher, whose 
recent History of the End of the Irish Parliament is 
pronouncedly unfriendly to Flood, that the marquis 
entertained the hope of annexing the orator to the 
administration. Whatever grounds he may have had 
for the entertainment of this view of Flood, he soon 
found himself disillusioned in a manner that must 
have been maddening to one of his arbitrary disposi- 
tion. It is true that in the beginning of the adminis- 
tration Flood had but very little to say, albeit his dis- 
content was generally known. 

The first act of the viceroy was to push for the 
passage of the Limitation bill, and in this he had the 
hearty cooperation of the orator, who had a program 
of his own which embraced this reform. It was not 
the first time this innovation had been proposed, and 
on several previous occasions the bill providing for the 



12 THE ' IRISH " ORATORS 

limitation of the life of parliament had been passed Ky 
the Irish house of commons and promptly vetoed. 
When Townsend again asked for its consideration it 
was taken up with celerity and passed with practical 
unanimity. This was accomplished through the con- 
vergence of three powerful elements, no two of which 
were actuated by the same motives. The object of 
Townsend was to break the power of the aristocratic 
party, which, notwithstanding its corrupt and selfish 
tendencies bore some faint resemblance to a national 
party, to the end that he might more arbitrarily domi- 
nate from the Castle ; the Undertakers voted for it in 
the firm expectation that it would again be rejected by 
the privy council ; while Flood's idea was to make the 
house of commons more responsive to the public will 
by forcing it to renew itself at intervals through an 
appeal to the people. The Undertakers, who could 
easily have defeated the bill, soon found to their cha- 
grin that they had taken their pitcher to the well once 
too often, for the privy council, no longer willing to 
bear the brunt of popular indignation, passed it on to 
England, where it was amended slightly and accepted. 
This miscalculation on the part of the Undertakers 
threw them into violent opposition and made possible 
the powerful consolidation of opposing interests which 
the organizing genius of Flood soon perfected. 

It was immediately after this, when Townsend be- 
gan to press for the passage of the Augmentation bill, 
that Henry Flood began to loom large in Irish affairs. 
Every effort was made by the government to meet the 
objections of the opposition, and it was agreed that 
Ireland should never again be denuded of troops, and 
that there should never be less than twelve thousand 



HENRY FLOOD 13 

retained without the explicit consent of the Irish par- 
liament. The aristocratic party, however, was not to 
be conciliated by such concessions. Its resentment be- 
cause of the passage of the Limitation bill had not 
died down. It was prepared to follow any leader into 
a general policy of opposition. Thus when Flood 
boldly pronounced against the increase in the number 
of troops and moved the rejection of the bill, the entire 
body of the Undertakers fell in behind him and the 
government was overwhelmingly defeated. 

Because of this connection between the corruption- 
ists of the aristocratic party and Flood, it has been the 
policy of English historians to ascribe to the orator the 
same base motives that controlled the Undertakers. 
Nothing could be more unjust. At the beginning of 
the Townsend regime Flood formulated a patriotic 
program providing for the limitations of the life of 
parliament, the reduction of the pension list, the estab- 
lishment of a national militia, and the complete legis- 
lative independence of Ireland. Never for a moment, 
while Townsend held office, did the patriotic leader 
waver in his determination to give practical effect to 
his program, and it would have been the acme of as- 
ininity for him to have refused the cooperation of the 
Undertakers, no matter how unworthy their motives. 
The cause he espoused was good. It was nothing less 
than the cause of Ireland. The accomplishment of his 
purpose would undoubtedly have redounded to the 
benefit of the nation. He found himself a member of 
a legislative body that was literally honeycombed with 
corruption, and utterly helpless to get results without 
the support of men of low political ethics. The mem- 
bers of the house who were above approach, were in a 



14 THE IRISH ORATORS 

miserable minority, and, like the practical politician 
that he was, he built up, for the first time, a real party 
of opposition through which he was enabled to accom- 
plish infinite good. We shall find later on that this 
alliance was merely temporary and that Flood and his 
allies were as wide apart as the poles in their concep- 
tion of patriotic duty. 

Infuriated by the frustration of his plans, the irate 
Townsend demanded the immediate dissolution of 
parliament, and began to lay his lines to break the 
power of the aristocratic party in the elections. Dur- 
ing the interval, he resorted to every method at his 
command to bring in a government majority. Peers 
were created, special favors were bestowed, and the 
functions of his office were shamelessly prostituted to 
the purchase of support. It appears that he looked 
forward with confidence to the new parliament which 
convened in October, 1769, but he soon found himself 
sadly at sea. In his letters of this period we find him 
complaining of the cold and distant attitude of the 
parliamentary leaders and their contemptuous treat- 
ment of his office. Thoroughly aroused, he determined 
to resort to intimidation, and men holding government 
positions were called to the Castle and threatened with 
dismissal in the event they failed to support govern- 
ment measures. These men, still smarting under the 
recollection of the Limitation bill, listened coldly and 
made no promises. 

The test of strength came with the effort to pass the 
Money bill. It had long been the desire of the house 
to obtain for parliament a complete control over the 
purse, and there had been a growing resentment of the 
policy of altering money bills in England. The Money 



HENRY FLOOD 15 

bill of 1769 originated, as usual, in the privy council 
and was sent down to the house for ratification. The 
moment it was read, Henry Flood, now the acknowl- 
edged head of the opposition to the government, 
promptly rose in his place and moved the rejection of 
the bill on the ground that it had not originated with 
the members of the house, and without further discus- 
sion it was defeated. Then, as a manifestation of loy- 
alty to the crown, the house voted large supplies and 
passed the Augmentation bill. 

This was the first open declaration of war on a 
fundamental or constitutional principle — and the battle 
for Irish independence has been on from that hour to 
this. 

The blow was a severe one, and Townsend, wild 
with indignation, hurried down to the house, and after 
delivering an abusive harangue, he prorogued the par- 
liament regardless of the fact that much important 
public business was pending. 

Never before had the Irish people been so thor- 
oughly stirred as during the fourteen months that in- 
tervened before parliament was again called together. 
The bold manner in which Flood had defied authority ; 
the publicity that he had succeeded in giving to his pro- 
gram of reform, the arbitrary manner in which the 
viceroy had dismissed the representatives of the na- 
tion, all conspired to create an instrumentality of 
power that had not existed since the death of Swift — 
a virile, enlightened, public opinion. It was to this 
that Flood now turned his attention, and we shall find 
that throughout his subsequent career, it was upon 
this that he depended. He knew as well as the modern 
English historians, the miserable character of the per- 



16 THE IRISH ORATORS < 

sonnel of the opposition he had consolidated. He 
knew the power of pensions and of patronage in cut- 
ting the ground from under him within the house of 
commons. He doubtless had a profound contempt for 
the average member of parliament. His plan, there- 
fore, was to strengthen himself and the patriotic party, 
by bringing an enlightened and determined public 
opinion to bear upon the "den of thieves." And in 
this work he had as collaborators none less than 
Henry Grattan and Sir Hercules Langrishe. 

About this time a famous series of satirical letters 
began to appear in The Freeman, the bitterness and 
brilliancy of which soon made a deep impression upon 
the country. We are interested especially in the con- 
tributions of Flood. In looking over them in this day 
of moderation one is instantly impressed with the fe- 
rocity of the attacks. He used the meat ax rather than 
the sword. 

However while Flood and his followers were busily 
engaged in organizing, through their satires, an en- 
lightened public opinion against the viceroy, the inter- 
val preceding the parliament of 1771 was utilized by 
Townsend in buying government support with the 
means at his command. It is said that not less than 
half a million was spent in rounding up a government 
majority. Peerages, pensions, places, promises, intim- 
idations, were marshaled by the viceroy into an in- 
vincible army of defense, and when parliament met 
Townsend felt assured of easy sailing. This sense of 
jubilation was accentuated by the action of the house 
in proposing and passing a congratulatory address to 
the viceroy. This act of sycophancy was not per- 
mitted to go unopposed however, and again we find 



HENRY FLOOD 17 

Flood meeting with spirit his obligations as a leader 
of opposition by assailing the proposal with an au- 
dacity then unique in Irish politics. His general style 
of aiming directly at the bull's eye was not set aside in 
this instance, as shown by his personal attack upon 
Lord Townsend : 



"I am not in any wise amazed," he said, "that those 
who are under obligations to Lord Townsend should at- 
tempt to defend his conduct. Gratitude exacts this duty 
from them, and the debt, though paid at the expense of 
their integrity, yet the justice of this private virtue may 
seemingly account for ; but as I am under no such com- 
pliment to that noble lord I will speak my thoughts with 
freedom and express my sentiments unawed. For my 
part, I have ever opposed the administration of Lord 
Townsend, not from personal pique or private spleen, 
but from a manifest, from a warranted conviction that 
he had acted wrong. I have, since the opening of the 
session, rather been silent on his conduct, because I 
wished those wounds which he gave my country might 
be healed, and that a name so hateful to the virtuous 
part of this house might be buried in oblivion. But when 
I find unmerited applause bestowed, unjust panegyric 
given, and that he who deserves the severest censure is 
adorned with laurels, I can not patiently sit, and silently 
listen. A gentleman on my left (Mr. Agar) has called 
the noble lord to order because he has dared to speak 
against his patron. Who was it first began the theme? 
I appeal to the house if from the government side the 
altercation did not originate. An honorable member op- 
posite me first mentioned Lord Townsend; I did not; 
nor did any of my friends; they brought him forward 
and are answerable for what has been or what may be 
said of him. It has been observed in this now absent 
lord's praise that the most salutary laws we ever expe- 
rienced owed their enactment to him. I deny it. I speak 
with confidence, nor am I apt to tell untruths. The Lim- 



18 THE IRISH ORATORS 

itation bill, which has been so loudly echoed as his deed, 
he derives not the slightest merit from. It was I who 
first gave the assisting hand to that excellent law; nor 
am I ashamed to pay myself the compliment ; for honest 
fame is the just reward of an upright heart, and I am 
not averse to the gift. I followed the bill to the other 
side, and when it was the doubt of the minister whether 
it should pass, I told him the arguments that were its 
foundation ; in this I was backed by Lord Chatham, and 
the minister allowed them unanswerable. I therefore do 
aver that from this transaction Lord Townsend can not 
expect the shadow of honor. I speak truly for I am 
afraid of no man. I seek no favor but the applause that 
may flow from performing my duty. I am under no ob- 
ligations to this or that viceroy : and I believe I may say 
that I rejected proffered benefits. I shall now only re- 
mark that from every observation I could make — Lord 
Townsend acted as an enemy, to our country, to our con- 
stitution, and our liberties ; for which reason, instead of 
panegyric, he should, by every real friend of Ireland, be 
treated as a public malefactor." 

It was through the use of such language that Flood, 
during the whole of the Townsend administration be- 
came as much of a terror to the corruptionists of 
Ireland as Chatham had been to those of the days of 
Walpole across the channel. The speech just quoted 
did not prevent the passage of the address, but it did 
have a demoralizing effect upon the Castle minions to 
whom it brought the realization that Flood proposed 
to continue the struggle and to expose to the public 
the mercenaries of the viceroy. During the first few 
days of the session all the divisions were carried by 
the government, but when the altered Money bill was 
brought in and Flood led another fight against it on 
the ground that it did not originate in the house, he 



HENRY FLOOD 19 

led a triumphant army, enough of the bought and paid 
for members coming over to prevent its acceptance. 

It was at this juncture that Townsend, now thor- 
oughly desperate, proposed to increase the membership 
of the Commission of Revenue, who sat in the house 
of commons, from seven to twelve with the view to 
adding five government supporters; and when Flood 
moved the rejection of the proposal on the ground 
that seven were sufficient, the viceroy decided to force 
the fighting by increasing the membership without the 
consent of parliament. This aroused the country to a 
white heat of indignation. The constant agitation of 
Flood had prepared the nation for just such a recep- 
tion of such news. The unpopularity of Townsend 
grew apace. And when the house passed several votes 
of censure upon the viceroy because of his official 
conduct, Townsend, in unutterable disgust, threw up 
his office, and indignantly returned to England. 

At this time Henry Flood stood upon the pinnacle 
of his glory. No man in the history of Ireland had 
ever before been able to wield such power. His elo- 
quence, surpassing that of any other man his country 
had brought forth, had made him the popular idol. 
No greater master of parliamentary tactics had ever 
occupied a seat in the house. Regardless of the poor 
quality of material at hand, he had built up for the 
first time an organized and definite opposition to the 
government. He had aroused in the people an interest 
in parliamentary discussions and the proceedings of 
the house that had never before existed. He had 
given proof of statesmanlike qualities by placing be- 
fore the nation a definite program and he had forced 
the consummation of a portion of his plans. Without 



20 THE IRISH ORATORS 






an office, he had unhorsed a viceroy and made his name 
familiar not only in Ireland, but in the ministerial 
conferences of London. And when in 1772 he paid 
a visit to London to urge upon Lord North the com- 
mercial rights of Ireland and the necessity for an 
absentee tax, he was received with marked respect by 
the leading men of the empire. Had he passed from 
the scene at this time his course would have appeared, 
to posterity, consistent throughout. 

Ill 

When Lord Harcourt went over to Ireland to take 
up the work abandoned by Townsend it was with the 
intention of winning by conciliation. The pictures we 
have of this nobleman are not such as to justify the 
least expectation of brilliant success. He had served 
as ambassador at Versailles, where he had become 
adept in the gentle art of kissing milady's hand, an 
art not especially useful in Dublin Castle. He appears 
to have been an easy-going, conciliatory, well-meaning 
sort of man of colorless character, who soon found it 
to his pleasure to leave the prosy duties of his position 
to Blanquiere, the secretary, whose amazing capacity 
for the consumption of liquor, and tact in cultivating 
the house of commons were expected to popularize the 
administration and smooth away the rough places in 
the road. The one ambition of the new viceroy, in 
which he appears to have taken a genuine interest, was 
to conciliate and capture Henry Flood. 

In the early days of the Harcourt administration 
we find the conduct of Flood to be such as to have 
caused considerable concern to his real friends. In 



HENRY FLOOD 21 

common with all the leaders of opposition he attended 
the first levee at the Castle and manifested a friendly 
feeling for the new viceroy. This was followed by 
peculiar action in the house. It appears that he sup- 
ported the government from the beginning, albeit at 
first in an entirely independent manner. At times his 
absence from the house attracted unfavorable com- 
ment, especially when the interests of his country de- 
manded his presence. The absence and indifference of 
the leader had its inevitable effect upon the army and 
it fell into a state of utter demoralization. His friends 
became alarmed. Lord Charlemont, the most devoted 
friend he ever had, appears to have remonstrated with 
him earnestly and without effect. Finally he accepted 
office under Harcourt, taking the lucrative position of 
vice-treasurer of Ireland with a seat in the privy 
council. Henceforth during the remainder of the 
Harcourt regime he was silent for the most part and 
pitifully evasive when he was not silent. This injects 
the one big interrogation point into his career. Was 
he a traitor to his country, or was he true to himself? 
It has been the contention of Flood's admirers that 
he was amply justified in accepting office. The most 
damaging evidence against him is to be found in the 
correspondence of government officials during that 
period. In The End of the Irish Parliament, Mr. 
Fisher has made out a pretty strong case for the plain- 
tiff. There seems to be no doubt but that Harcourt 
authorized Blanquiere to find an office of sufficient 
importance to satisfy Flood and that there was a long 
delay in the matter due in part to the unfriendly atti- 
tude of the secretary toward the orator. It is now 
established that Flood was in complete accord with the 



22 THE IRISH ORATORS 

arrangement and that he looked longingly toward the 
very important position of provost of Trinity College. 
His failure to get this place appears to have soured 
him, and if we are to credit the letters of Harcourt, he 
became very insistent upon recognition. In one of his 
letters to England written at this time Harcourt says : 

"Mr. Flood is greatly offended. I saw him yesterday 
and he complained most bitterly. He took occasion to 
put forth his important services which he thought justly 
entitled him to preferment which had been given to Mr. 
Hutchinson (provost of Trinity) without even making 
him a tender of it. He laid great stress upon the diffi- 
culties and obstructions he could have thrown in the 
way had he been disposed to be adverse." 

This is inconsistent with the idea that he was 
"pressed" to take office. It indicates, rather, that he 
not only had reached a groveling and whining stage 
but that he was not above a certain kind of blackmail. 
About this time he indicated to Harcourt that he was 
"done with the Castle" and complained that it was 
"humiliating for a patriot to lose his reputation by de- 
serting to the government and then fail to get a place." 
The viceroy appealed to London for assistance and 
Lord North, who sympathized with his embarrass- 
ment, suggested reviving the position of president of 
Munster, with no duties and an attractive salary, but 
Harcourt rejected the suggestion and insisted upon 
one of the three vice-treasurerships which had always 
gone to Englishmen and were desired by North for 
his own friends. At length, however, North yielded 
to the importunities of the viceroy and the offer was 
made to the now irritated Flood. "The acquisition of 



henry; flood. 23 

Mr. Flood, circumstanced as things are," wrote Har- 
court to North, "can not be purchased at too dear a 
price." When the proposition was made, Flood, now 
grown peevish by the long delay in the negotiations, 
at first refused; then he agreed to accept provided the 
salary should be thrown upon England rather than 
Ireland; and finally he accepted unconditionally. 

"Since I was born," wrote the easy-going Harcourt, 
"I never had to deal with so difficult a man, owing 
principally to his high-strained ideas of his own in- 
fluence and popularity." The evidence of Flood's 
unpopularity with the government is not confined by 
any means to the above quotation. In the alphabetical 
list of members of the house, prepared by the secre- 
tary, we find the following unfavorable description of 
Flood opposite his name: "Formerly engineer and 
mouthpiece of the opposition. Impractical in his con- 
duct in parliament, in private life held in abhorrence 
and detestation by all men of integrity and truth. 
When Lord Harcourt arrived Flood affected candor 
and promised support. Upon some important ques- 
tions he supported; upon others, equally material to 
government, he kept away. In consequence of this 
conduct a promise of some considerable employment 
was held out to him." 

Still another side-light on Harcourt's attitude to- 
ward him is found in the trick played him in connec- 
tion with the viceroy's proposal to raise money for the 
government by taxing the rents of absentee landlords. 
This proposal encountered the most acrimonious oppo- 
sition in England, and Burke drew up, on behalf of 
the Whigs, a strong remonstrance which convinced the 
government of the necessity of abandoning the meas- 



24 L THE IRISH ORATORS 

lire. The problem was how to kill it without embar- 
rassment to the viceroy. In one of his letters of this 
period Harcourt writes that "a certain wild, inconsist- 
ent gentleman will be put up in the house to propose 
it and that will be sufficient to damn it." The "wild, 
inconsistent gentleman" was Flood! He had always 
been a consistent advocate of an absentee tax, and the 
passage of such a measure by the Harcourt adminis- 
tration would furnish a plausible excuse for accepting 
office under it. The probability is that he knew noth- 
ing of the treachery of Harcourt and it is certain that 
he spoke in favor of the tax with surpassing brilliancy. 
Harcourt, writing of this speech says : "Mr. Flood was 
violent and able in behalf of the measure in a degree 
almost surpassing everything he has ever uttered 
before." 

On the part of the defense much of a plausible na- 
ture has been written by friendly historians. The point 
is made that Flood had only found an opposition 
party of effective force possible through the temporary 
alliance with the Undertakers whose disrelish for 
Townsend did not extend to the new viceroy. Certain 
it is that the moment Harcourt appeared the Under- 
takers who had affiliated with Flood were quick to 
make their peace with the new officials. With an ade- 
quate opposition impossible in the house and without 
sufficient support from public opinion without, Flood 
concluded that the patriotic thing to do would be to go 
inside the government and do the best possible for the 
country. The claim is made that Flood, knowing 
something of the easy-going character of Harcourt, 
believed that within a short time he would be able to 
dominate the government from within. In the early 



HENRY FLOOB 25 

days of the administration several concessions were 
made that are ascribed by the admirers of Flood to his 
presence in the privy council. The commissioners of 
revenue on which he had fought Townsend were abol- 
ished, and the boards of customs and excise which 
had been divided against Flood's opposition were re- 
united. The public at large had every reason to be- 
lieve that Harcourt had sincerely supported the 
absentee tax for which Flood had fought from his 
entrance in public life. Some commercial restrictions 
opposed by Flood were removed, and a bounty on the 
export of Irish corn, advocated by Flood, was carried. 
Flood always contended in later life that he had ex- 
erted himself to the utmost while a member of the 
privy council to give a liberal trend to the admin- 
istration. 

As a set-off to the good accomplished by the Har- 
court regime through the probable influence of Flood 
many unpopular features developed for which he had 
to share responsibility. The most unfortunate of 
these perhaps was the action of the Irish government 
in authorizing the contribution of troops to aid in put- 
ting down the American colonies. The admirers of 
Flood will always regret that he threw himself so zeal- 
ously into the fight against the colonies. He appears 
to have become an ardent champion of the empire at 
this juncture and in his speeches he impressively 
warned the government that if the colonies should be 
permitted their freedom "destruction will come upon 
the British empire like the coldness of death, will creep 
upon it from the extreme parts." He gave a rather 
fantastic description of the troops to be sent from 
Ireland, They were to go as "armed negotiators*" 




26 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Flood's speech against the Americans was described by 
Harcourt as "great and able." 

When in 1776 Harcourt retired and was succeeded 
by the Earl of Buckinghamshire, Flood continued in 
office, although he appears to have found the govern- 
mental atmosphere less congenial. He complained that 
he was being treated as a "mere placeman," and he 
began to absent himself more and more from the privy 
council. Notwithstanding his dissatisfaction he con- 
tinued in office, though he sat in his seat in the house 
silent, morose and disappointed. 

When parliament met in 1779 the condition of Ire- 
land was all but desperate, as a result of the embargo, 
and after a series of meetings throughout the country 
where demands were made for free trade, Grattan 
moved an amendment to the address concluding with 
the demand for "free exports." During the course of 
the discussion Flood manifested the keenest interest, 
and his suggestion that the words "free trade" be sub- 
stituted for "free exports" was adopted and carried 
with the aid of his vote. This was the most serious 
defection the government had encountered and it made 
the position of Flood in office scarcely more tenable. 
However, he continued to hold on, while allying him- 
self more and more with the opposition to measures of 
vital importance, until 1780 when the government 
manifested its displeasure by dismissing him from the 
privy council. 

This marks the end of the most unsatisfactory 
period in the long career of Henry Flood. In conclud- 
ing this portion of his life it is but fair to record his 
own explanation of his course during the Harcourt 
and Buckingham administrations, offered in his mas- 



HENRY FLOOD 27 t 

ferful defense of his political life in reply to the attack 
by Henry Grattan. 

"I come now," he said, "to the period in which Lord 
Harcourt governed, and which is stigmatized by the 
word 'venal/ If every man who accepts an office is 
venal and an apostate, I certainly can not acquit myself 
of the charge, nor is it necessary. If it be a. crime 
universally, let it be universally ascribed ; but it is not 
fair that one set of men should be treated by that hon- 
orable member as great friends and lovers of their 
country, notwithstanding they are in office, and another 
set of men should be treated as enemies and apostates. 
What is the truth? Everything of this sort depends 
on the principles on which the office is taken, and on 
which it is retained. With regard to myself let no man 
imagine I am preaching up a doctrine for my own con- 
venience; there is no man in this house less concerned 
in the propagation of it. I beg leave to state briefly 
the manner in which I accepted the vice-treasurership : 

"It was offered me in the most honorable manner, 
with the assurance not only of being a placeman for 
my own profit, but a minister for the benefit of my 
country. My answer was that I thought in a constitu- 
tion such as the British an intercourse between the 
prince and the subject ought to be honorable. The cir- 
cumstances of being a minister ought to redound to a 
man's credit, though I lament to say it often happens 
otherwise; men in office frequently forget those prin- 
ciples which they maintained before. I mentioned the 
public principles which I held, and added, if consistently 
with them, from an atom of which I could not depart, 
I could be of service to his majesty's government, I 
was ready to render it. I now speak in the presence 
of men who know what I say. After the appointment 
had come over to this kingdom, I sent in writing to the 
chief governor that I could not accept it unless on my 
own stipulations. Thus, sir, I took office. ... 

"In Lord Harcourt's administration what did I do? 



28 THE IRISH ORATORS 

I had the board of commissioners reduced to one, by 
which a saving of twenty thousand pounds a year was 
effected. I went further, I insisted on having every 
altered money bill thrown out, and privy council bills 
not defended by the crown. Thus, instead of giving 
sanction to the measures I had opposed, my conduct 
was in fact to register my principles in the records of 
the court — to make the privy council witness the priv- 
ileges of the parliament and give final energy to the 
tenets with which I commenced my public life. The 
right honorable member who has censured me, in order 
to deprecate that economy, said that 'we have swept 
with the feather of economy the pens and papers off 
our table' — a pointed and brilliant expression which is 
far from a just argument. This country had no rea- 
son to be ashamed of that species of economy, when 
the great nation of Britain had been obliged to descend 
to a system as minute; it was not my fault if infinitely 
more was not done. If administrations were wrong 
on the absentee tax, they were wrong with the preju- 
dices of half a century — they were wrong with every 
great writer who has treated of Irish affairs. . . . 
To show that I was not under any undue influence of 
office, when the disposition of the house was made to 
alter on the absentee tax, and when the administration 
yielded to the violence of parliament, I appeal to the 
consciousness and public testimony of many present 
whether I did veer and turn with the secretary, or 
whether I did not make a manly stand in its favor. 
After having pledged myself to the public I would 
rather break with a million administrations than retract ; 
I not only adhered to that principle, but, by a singular, 
instance of exertion, found it a second time under the 
consideration of this house." 

Upon this, his own defense, the admirers and de- 
fenders of Flood rest their case. It is more agreeable 
to accept it. It is pleasant to turn now to contemplate 
him once more in the more heroic role of opposition. 



HENRY FLOOD 29 

IV 

On separating himself from the service of the gov- 
ernment it is probable that Flood expected to resume 
his old place as the leader, and acknowledged leader, 
of the opposition, but he soon realized with bitterness 
that during his association with the Castle others had 
supplanted him in his old role. Among the underlings 
of the Castle he was thoroughly hated for what they 
termed his apostacy, while the opposition members 
either distrusted the sincerity of his reversion or 
feared that he could displace them in the position of 
leadership. He found himself literally without friends 
in the house. Several incidents have been recorded by 
historians illustrative of the treatment accorded to 
him. In 1779, in supporting YelvCrton's motion for 
the repeal of Poyning's law, he complained that "after 
twenty years of service in the study of this particular 
question'* he had been superseded, and added: "The 
honorable gentleman is erecting a temple to liberty. 
I hope that I at least shall be allowed a niche in the 
fane." It was in response to this that Yelverton made 
his famous retort: "If a man should separate from 
his wife, desert, and abandon her for seven years, 
another may take her and give her protection." 

Such was the state of feeling when the fight on the 
question of simple repeal was precipitated by Flood 
and the stage was set for the final and dramatic break 
between the two great orators and patriot leaders who 
had studied their art together years ago in the classic 
seclusion of Farmley. The conditions at the time 
were auspicious for a strike for Irish independence. 
England was engaged in her struggle with the colonies. 



30 JHE IRISH ORATORS 

The people of Ireland, left without adequate protec- 
tion from French invasion, had taken upon themselves 
the defense of their homes, and as if by magic the 
Volunteers of Ireland — one hundred thousand armed 
men — sprang into existence. Had this armed force 
taken advantage of that opportunity Ireland might 
easily have repeated the performance of the Ameri- 
cans, and the ministers lived in extreme dread of the 
possibility. At this juncture Grattan moved his Decla- 
ration of Rights, which was adopted by the house, 
which afterward marched in procession between the 
Volunteers who lined the streets, to the Castle and 
presented its demands. The demands of Ireland were 
promptly and without qualification conceded by the 
ministers. In a moment of jubilation Grattan rose 
and moved an address of satisfaction and gratitude 
in which he insisted that to ask anything further 
would be foolish and unreasonable caution. He was 
completely satisfied with the English recognition of 
the independence of the Irish parliament. He hoped 
that the concession would also satisfy the Volunteers 
and they would promptly disband. In this he was 
doomed to disappointment. 

The unpopularity of Flood in the house did not ex- 
tend to the general public, where he was extraordina- 
rily popular and especially with the Volunteers, and 
when he startled the house by standing forth in a mili- 
tant patriotism, and warned the country that the mere 
repeal of the Declaration Act would not suffice and 
that nothing less than an express act of the English 
parliament renouncing for all time the right to legis- 
late for Ireland could be accepted he struck the popular 
chord. His militant attitude aroused the greatest en- 



HENRY FLOOD 31 

thusiasm among the Volunteers. The Lawyers' Corps 
of the organization passed resolutions favorable to his 
contention. The Belfast Volunteers hailed him as the 
legitimate head of the patriot movement in a letter to 
him urging him to take the lead. "Your unquestioned 
abilities," they said, "your unrivaled eloquence, your 
knowledge which seems bounded only by the limits 
which the author of our nature has inscribed for our 
kind, and the sacrifice you have made to serve your 
country, oblige us to look up to you as one of the first 
of men." In his reply Flood proffered his services 
and the fight was on. 

The following incidents enter into the most dra- 
matic and inspiring period in Flood's career. The 
house was predisposed against him and the ministers 
looked upon his demand as revolutionary. Earl Tem- 
ple, then viceroy, writing to England, declared that the 
concession of the demands would "close the account 
forever between the two kingdoms." But the country, 
seething with patriotic passion, was with Flood, and 
the ominous armed men, ready to spring at the word, 
were with him. Within six weeks after writing the 
warning to England just quoted, Temple was as firmly 
convinced that England's only safety lay in the sur- 
render to Flood's demands. During the interval a 
decision in an Irish case had been rendered by Lord 
Mansfield which conclusively demonstrated the cor- 
rectness of Flood's contention, and like the practical 
politician that he was, the orator made the best possible 
use of it in the agitation he was directing without the 
walls of parliament. From his place in the house 
Flood led the fight in speeches of unanswerable elo- 
quence and in words of Chatham-like defiance. 



32 THE IRISH "ORATORS 



A 



"Ireland is an independent kingdom," He declared. 
"She has a completely free and supreme legislature of 
her own, and has accordingly a full right to enter into 
commerce, and conclude treaties with every nation on 
the globe. Here I set my foot; can any man deny — 
can any man controvert this position? I call upon the 
host of crown lawyers. Can even the representative of 
administration deny it? He dares not; and his silence 
I interpret into acquiescence. If any man will under- 
take to refute this position with proofs, I will listen to 
him; but if any shall adduce mere arguments and opin- 
ions, I am ready to lacerate and explode them." 

Emboldened by the consciousness of the strength of 
his position he burst forth in the following passage of 
revolutionary fire : 



"Our liberties were first infringed by the detestable 
Stafford, but the cries of this oppressed country have 
pursued and overtaken him; and I earnestly pray that 
a like vengeance may light upon every future tyrant 
who shall attack the constitution with the high hand 
of prerogative, or the slower sap of corruption." 



Turning to the followers of Grattan and charging 
them with a willingness to accept half-way measures 
he said : 



"What is the use of a charter but to defend the rights 
of the people against arbitrary power? — a half assertion 
of your rights will never do. I would not leave an 
atom of power in an arbitrary council, either English 
or Irish; legislation does not belong to them; nor can 
you ever have a safe constitution while they interfere. 
You can not raise a structure of adamant on a founda- 
tion of sand." 



HENRY FLOOD 33 

The conclusions of his speeches reached the highest 
eloquence and made a profound impression on the 
house : 



"And now, Mr. Speaker, if I have a feeling in the 
inmost pulse of my heart it is that which tells me that 
this is a great and awful day: it is that which tells me 
that if after twenty years' service I shall pass this ques- 
tion by neglectingly, I shall be a base betrayer of my 
country: it is that which tells me that the whole earth 
does not contain a bribe sufficient to make me trifle with 
the liberties of this land. I do therefore wish to sub- 
scribe my name to that which I now propose, and to 
have it handed down to posterity, that posterity may 
know that there was at least one man who disapproved 
of the temporizing bill now before the house — a bill 
that future parliaments, if they have power, will re- 
form — if they have not, with tears will deplore. . . . 

"Were the voice with which I now utter this the last 
effort of expiring nature; were the accent which con- 
veys it to you the breath that was to waft me to that 
grave to which we all tend, and to which my footsteps 
rapidly accelerate, I would go on, I would make my 
exit by a loud demand for your rights ; and I call upon 
the God of truth and liberty, who has so often favored 
you, and who has of late looked down upon you with 
such a peculiar grace and glory of protection, to con- 
tinue to you His inspirings, to crown you with the spirit 
oi His completion, and to assist you against the errors 
of those who are honest, as well as against the machina- 
tions of those who are not." 

Backed as he was by the public opinion he had 
aroused and by the support of the Volunteers he forced 
the house to his way of thinking and won a complete 
Victory which was duly ratified by the reluctant power 
across the channel. At the conclusion of this fight he 



34 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



had reached a greater degree of popularity and power 
than he had possessed before. The envious within the 
house were completely disarmed. Flood had found 
himself again. 

The feeling between Flood and Grattan in the mean- 
while had been growing tense, and more particularly 
on the part of the younger man. At length the storm 
broke. The pretext for the quarrel came in a harm- 
less motion of Sir H. Cavendish, to which an amend- 
ment was proposed by Flood. The incident reflects 
no great credit upon either man. The exchange of 
philippics while reflecting the oratorical brilliancy of 
the leaders might profitably be forgotten by the ad- 
mirers of each. The quarrel seems to have been 
sought on the part of Grattan, whose first speech ap- 
pears to have been carefully prepared. With great 
dexterity Grattan played upon the weak points in 
Flood's career, but the severity of his language and 
the ferocity of his assault were scarcely justified by the 
facts. A duel was narrowly averted. A little later 
the house granted Flood an opportunity for the de- 
livery of the elaborate and conclusive defense from 
which a quotation has been given, and when at the 
conclusion Grattan rose to renew the quarrel, the 
house manifested its satisfaction with Flood's expla- 
nation and its disapprobation of- Grattan's attitude by 
adjourning and refusing to hear him. The attack did 
not materially injure Flood at the time and public 
sympathy seems to have been largely with him. Even 
the king, speaking to the Duke of Chandos at a levee, 
expressed his amazement at the action of Grattan. In 
the years that followed Flood also appears in a better 
and broader light. On one occasion he saluted Grat- 



HENRY FLOOD 35 

fan in passing, but the salute being ignored he never 
again made an attempt at conciliation, although he was 
big enough to preside at several meetings where com- 
plimentary resolutions were passed upon the work of 
his rival. Unfortunately, however, the fame of Flood 
has suffered in the transmission of Grattan's wonder- 
ful invective to posterity which is too generally ac- 
cepted at its face value by the superficial reader of 
Irish history. It did not injure him with the Volun- 
teers, however, as we shall see. 

V 

It was inevitable that Flood's victory in the renun- 
ciation action should have created immense enthusi- 
asm among the Volunteers and impelled them to push 
forward to greater triumphs. Even the attack of 
Grattan failed to diminish one whit the loyalty of the 
citizen-soldiery and we find the Belfast Volunteers, 
after the attack, writing him : 

"Persevere, sir. Continue to exert your unequalled 
abilities in fixing the internal constitution of this king- 
dom on a permanent and solid foundation. The voice 
of the people is your support, and the voice of the people 
must be attended to. It is the purity of the constitution 
that gives our country the preference to another, and 
marks the genius of the inhabitants in a most distin- 
guishing manner. We hope the period is drawing nigh 
when the senate will speak the wishes of the people, and 
when our liberty shall be complete." 

The meaning of this was soon manifest in the deter- 
mination of the Volunteers to press upon parliament 
the passage of a parliamentary reform bill and an 



36 



THE IRISH "ORATORS 



IrisH bill of rights. Meanwhile Portland, the prime 
minister, and the new viceroy, thoroughly concerned 
on account of the Volunteers, were working on a plan 
for forming "fencible regiments" to take the place of 
the Volunteers. The reception of this news by the citi- 
zen-soldiery can readily be imagined. Galway, Bel- 
fast, Cork protested against the substitution of what 
they termed "mercenaries." The feeling became so 
bitter that the Belfast company at a banquet drank a 
toast — "May the fencibles and their friends never 
enjoy the benefits of freedom; May Ireland never 
want hemp to exalt all fencible commanders who de- 
serve it." This defiant attitude still further intensified 
the fear of the ministry and about this time we find 
Fox writing to poor Northington, the viceroy, de- 
manding all sorts of impossible things looking toward 
the curbing of the ominous organization. It is inter- 
esting to know that Grattan and Lord Charlemont, the 
most distinguished leader of the Volunteer movement, 
were in complete accord with the wishes of Fox and 
Northington while Flood did all within his power to 
encourage the aggressiveness of the citizen-soldiers. 

When the new parliament was called for October 
the Volunteers, having had preliminary meetings, de- 
termined to hold a convention in Dublin at the same 
time and to sit simultaneously with the house of com- 
mons. This smacked of revolution. It suggested the 
divided authority of the early days of the French Rev- 
olution. It meant Grattan's parliament against Flood's 
Volunteers. The American war having come to a 
disastrous conclusion, twelve thousand veteran soldiers 
were hurried into Ireland under the command of Gen- 
eral Burgoyne, and it is significant that Flood did all 



HENRY FLOOD 37 

within his power to reduce their number under the 
pretense of retrenchment. 

The opening of the Volunteers' convention was 
highly spectacular owing to the dramatic entrance to 
the city of the Earl Bishop of Derry, who was ambi- 
tious to dominate and head the soldiery for reasons 
that historians have concluded were revolutionary. 
This peculiar character, churchman and libertine in 
one, was an ostentatious dandy. He entered the city 
drawn by six prancing horses gaily garbed and accom- 
panied by two brilliantly uniformed squadrons of Vol- 
unteers. Reaching the parliament house, the members 
came out to pay their respects. The bishop saluted 
triumphantly, the bugle sounded, the band played and 
the procession moved on. In the light of what we now 
know it is possible that something serious might have 
resulted from the convention but for the prominence of 
the part played by the bishop. Men having no sym- 
pathy with the convention but having a right to mem- 
bership entered with the sole purpose of curbing the 
Bishop of Derry and creating discord in the ranks 
through the precipitation of a religious question. As it 
was, a committee was appointed to draw up a reform 
bill, which confined the franchise to Protestants, and 
Henry Flood was selected to present it to the house of 
commons. 

On the night of its presentation Dublin was seething 
with excitement. The feeling prevailed that the con- 
test between the convention and parliament was on. 
The galleries of the house were packed, and largely 
with the sympathizers of the Volunteers. The mem- 
bers of the convention who were also members of the 
house determined to march from the convention to the 



38 THE IRISH ORATORS 

house in the uniforms of the Volunteers with no less 
a personage than Henry Flood at the head of the pro- 
cession. 

When Flood rose pandemonium broke loose in the 
galleries. It must have been the proudest moment of 
his life. As he glanced over the house which had 
done all within its power to accomplish his humilia- 
tion and realized that his popularity with the people 
had never attained such heights before, it must have 
been with something of jubilation and haughtiness of 
spirit that he claimed the attention of the chair. There 
he stood — a magnificent and handsome figure arrayed 
in the uniform of the citizen-soldier, his eyes flashing 
fire, his manner kingly, feeling no doubt that he bore 
to a reluctant and unworthy assembly the message of 
a sovereign people. The galleries shouted encourage- 
ment. The convention was still sitting. Burgoyne's 
men were prepared for any emergency that might 
arise. Then Yelverton, the spokesman of the house, 
haughtily refused even to consider the bill on the 
ground that it was presented at the point of the bay- 
onet. In his opening speech Flood had carefully re- 
frained from mentioning the Volunteers or the con- 
vention, but when the citizen-soldiers were thus decried 
by Yelverton, he boldly launched forth in reply in his 
now famous defense of the Volunteers : 

"Sir, I have not mentioned the bill as being the meas- 
ure of any set of men or body of men whatsoever. I 
am as free to enter into a discussion of the bill as any 
gentleman in this house, and with as little prepossession 
of what I shall propose. I refer it to the house as the 
bill of my right honorable friend who seconded me— ; 
will you receive it from us? 



HENRY FLOOD 39 

"In the last parliament it was ordered, 'That leave be 
given for more equal representation of the people in 
parliament; 5 this was in the Duke of Portland's admin- 
istration, an administration the right honorable gentle- 
man (Yelverton) professes to admire, and which he 
will not suspect of overturning the constitution. 

"I own, from the turn which has been given to this 
question, I enter on it with the deepest anxiety; armed 
with the authority of a precedent, I did not think that 
any one would be so desperate as to give such violent 
opposition to the simple introduction of a bill. I now 
rise to speak to the subject, and I call on every man, 
auditor or spectator, in the house or in the galleries, 
to remember this truth — that if the Volunteers are in- 
troduced in this debate, it is not I who do so. The right 
honorable gentleman says, 'if the Volunteers have ap- 
proved it he will oppose it;' but I say I bring it in as 
a member of this house supported by the powerful aid 
of my right honorable friend (Mr. Brownlow) who sits 
behind me. We bring it in as members of parliament, 
not mentioning the Volunteers. I ask you, will you re- 
ceive it from us — from us, your members, neither in- 
tending by anything within doors or without to intimi- 
date or overawe you? I ask, will you — will you receive 
it as our bill, or will you conjure up a military phantom 
of interposition to affright you ? 

"I have not introduced the Volunteers, but if they 
are aspersed, I will defend their character against all 
the world. By whom were the commerce and consti- 
tution of this country recovered? By the Volunteers. 

"Why did not the right honorable gentleman make 
a declaration against them when they lined our streets 
I — when parliament passed through the ranks of those 
virtuous armed men to demand the rights of an insulted 
nation? Are they different men at this time, or is the 
right honorable gentleman different? He was then one 
of their body, he is now their accuser. He who saw 
the streets lined, who rejoiced, who partook in their 
glory, is now their accuser. Are they less wise, less 



40 THE IRISH ORATORS 

brave, less ardent in their country's cause, or has their 
admirable conduct made him their enemy? May they 
not say, we have not changed, but you have changed? 
The right honorable gentleman can not bear to hear of 
Volunteers; but I will ask him, and I will have a star- 
ling taught to haloo in his ear — Who gave you the free 
trade ? Who got you the free constitution ? Who made 
you a nation? The Volunteers. 

"If they were the men you now describe them, why 
did you accept of their service? Why did you not then 
accuse them? If they were so dangerous, why did you 
pass through their ranks with your speaker at your head 
to demand a constitution ? Why did you not then fear 
the ills you now apprehend?" 

In the debate that ensued, one of the most exciting 
in the history of the Irish parliament, Flood stood his 
ground, haughtily voicing the demands of the nation, 
while epithets like "armed demagogues" were rained 
upon him by many who must a little later have had 
cause to wonder whether he had not been the one fore- 
seeing man in the house. It was three o'clock in the 
morning when the vote came and in the midst of tur- 
moil the fight of the Volunteers was lost by a great 
majority. 

The following year Flood again introduced the bill 
when the Volunteers were not in session to overawe an 
Irish parliament and when the most timid of Irish 
statesmen must have felt perfectly safe under the 
guardianship of the English soldiery. Addresses in 
favor of the measure poured in from every section of 
the country. The speech of Flood was one of his 
most brilliant, but, after a prolonged debate, it was 
defeated about three o'clock on a Sunday morning by 
a majority of seventy- four. With this defeat Flood 



HENRY FLOOD 41 

lost all confidence in the Irish parliament and all hope 
of protecting his country in that quarter and a little 
later we find him abandoning the lawmakers of Dub- 
lin to sit in the English house of commons. 

It has been a puzzle to the historians to know 
whether or not Flood entertained revolutionary de- 
signs. It is quite probable that, knowing the character 
of the parliament as he did, he felt that nothing vital 
could be accomplished unless the members should be 
overawed by some force outside the walls, and that he 
was willing to resort to an unconstitutional method of 
procedure to attain a patriotic purpose. That others 
in later years recognized his wisdom is manifest in 
the question of Curran on the night of the destruc- 
tion of the legislative independence of Ireland when 
he turned sadly to a companion and asked, "Where 
now are your one hundred thousand men?" What- 
ever may be thought of Flood's connection with the 
Harcourt administration one thing must be conceded 
in the light of later developments: He was right in 
his contention that simple repeal was not sufficient, 
and he was right in his desire to see the Volunteers 
kept under arms. 

VI 

Unlike Grattan, O'Connell and Sheil, who were bril- 
liantly successful in the English commons, Henry 
Flood was unfortunate from the moment of his en- 
trance. His first speech was a disappointment, due 
partly to his physical condition at the time, and to the 
weariness of travel, as he had reached London by 
"forced marches" to make it. Soon afterward he was 



42 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



able to justify his Irish admirers by his masterful 
speeches in favor of his parliamentary reform bill, 
and on the commercial treaty with France. Very 
shortly after he had won the admiration of Fox by his 
argument on the French treaty he shocked the Eng- 
lish party leaders by his expressed determination to 
hold aloof from all English parties and to play an 
independent role. With this announcement all parties 
lost interest, and in 1790 he lost his seat. Disappointed, 
embittered, and sadly broken in health, he retired to 
Farmley where his last year was spent in morose 
seclusion. As he felt death approaching he requested 
to be left alone, and thus, like the Spartan that he was, 
he passed from earth in solitude. 

With all his faults, his virtues far outweighed them. 
His private life appears to have been such as to make 
the notation of the drunken Blanquiere in the alpha- 
betical list utterly without justification. In social life 
he was easy, polished, graceful, with a mildness of 
manner that was all the more striking because of the 
ferocity of his onslaught in the commons. He moved 
in the salon with the courtliness of a courtier. He 
loved his books and was never happier than when he 
could find time for the seclusion of his library. His 
temper was customarily even and unruffled and he 
possessed the Spartan's power of suffering in silence. 
His love for Ireland was disclosed in the bequest of a 
professorship at Trinity for the teaching of the Gaelic 
language, and the fact that the will was broken is to 
the discredit of others. There is something remark- 
able in the fact that Flood stood more than a century 
ago for the Volunteer movement now so popular, for 
the study of Gaelic now in vogue, for absolute inde- 



HENRY FLOOD 43 

pendence of English parties, as did Parnell in later 
years. He loved Ireland. 

VII 

In forming an estimate of his oratory we are sadly 
handicapped by the meager material by which to judge. 
The greater portion of his speeches was but indiffer- 
ently reported, seldom prepared, and never adequately 
collected. His great speech on the English Reform 
bill, for example, which won the admiration of Ed- 
mund Burke has come down to us in tantalizing frag- 
ments. His manner was, at times, highly theatrical and 
may have been patterned somewhat after that of 
Lord Chatham, upon whom he looked with an admira- 
tion akin to idolatry. He spoke with great delibera- 
tion, and his enunciation was perhaps a trifle too pre- 
cise. Two instances may be cited as illustrative of his 
histrionic talent. One evening while he was speaking 
in the house, members of a convivial club, gaudily 
garbed in orange and blue, noisily entered. Instantly 
he exclaimed : 

"Ha, what do I behold? I hail these glorious colors, 
auspicious of the constitution. These honorable men 
have no doubt spent the night in vigils for the glory 
and the fortune of the commonwealth." 

Then, with a sarcastic smile, he extended his arms 
and continued: "Come — come to this heart with all 
your patriotism. " 

His acting on this occasion is said to have been con- 
summate, and his sarcasm literally drove the revelers 
in confusion from the house. 



44 THE IRISH ORATORS 

On another occasion while he was speaking, his at- 
tention was directed to the activity of some of the 
whippers-in of the ministry going about among the 
benches, taking down the names of those who had 
promised to support the Castle, soliciting others, possi- 
bly bribing a few. Pausing a moment, and fixing his 
burning eyes upon them, he exclaimed : 

"What is this that I see? Shall the temple of free- 
dom be still haunted by the foul fiends of bribery and 
corruption? I see personified before me an incarnation 
of that evil principle which lives by the destruction of 
public virtue. Avaunt, thou loathsome sprite ; thou pan- 
derer to ministerial profligacy; and no longer pollute 
with thy presence this edifice, consecrated to the con- 
stitution." 

The effect of this denunciation was magical, and the 
whippers-in slunk hurriedly into the shadows. Such 
incidents vividly suggest the art of Lord Chatham. 
This boldness, this Mirabeauian audacity and spirit, 
made him an object as much of fear as of admiration. 

His speeches are not the masterpieces of rhetorical 
art that those of the succeeding Irish orators are, but 
it was Flood who first introduced rhetorical eloquence 
into the Irish parliament. He was a little too senten- 
tious and labored at times, and while his speeches were 
always thoughtful and well reasoned, he frequently 
became a little pedantic. It required a big subject to 
do him justice. His great rival, Grattan, once said: 
"Put a distaff in his hand, and, like Hercules, he made 
sad work of it; but give him a thunderbolt and he had 
the arm of Jove." As a parliamentarian reasoner he 
had no rival among his Irish contemporaries. Some 



HENRY FLOOD 45 

of his more ardent admirers like to compare him to 
Demosthenes whose oration on the Crown he had 
taken for a model. He did have a concentrated energy 
in argumentation, a nervous manner suggestive of the 
great Athenian. He did not waste words. He used 
them merely as implements of thought. He conse- 
quently lacks the adornment of rhetoric associated 
with the Irish school. There are few flights of fancy, 
few poetic touches in his speeches. Occasionally he 
flashed a picture, but he was not given to the working 
out of an elaborate bit of imagery. In one of his 
speeches, in referring to the charge that his holding of 
office detracted from his capacity to serve his country, 
he said that should the time come when his govern- 
mental position would conflict with his patriotic duty 
he would "remove the bracelet and throw it into the 
common cauldron." On another occasion in referring 
to attacks being made upon him he concluded haugh- 
tily : "I am the object of their puny efforts, but they 
harm me not ; I shake them off as falls the dew-drops 
from the lion's mane." 

The speeches of Flood do not sparkle and burn with 
the majestic rhythm with which the succeeding Irish 
orators delighted the senses while appealing to the 
minds of their hearers, and few of his passages are 
such that they have been repeated. But he whose elo- 
quence first made the ministers tremble, and whose 
genius commanded the adoration of his country and 
the admiration of Burke, Fox, Pitt and Wilberforce 
must always have a high place among the foremost of 
the Irish orators. 



II 



HENRY GRATTAN 



The Fight Against the Embargo on Irish Exports ; for the Inde- 
pendence of the Irish Parliament; Against the Commer- 
cial Propositions of Pitt; and Against the Policy 
of the Castle of Ruling by Corruption 

TO one Irishman only was it given to associate 
his name with the most inspiring and the most 
depressing incidents of Erin's story. To have sounded 
the paean of the triumph that gave his people an inde- 
pendent parliament, and to have been the most dra- 
matic spectator of its fall was given only to him who 
"stood by its cradle and followed its hearse." This 
association alone would suffice to set him upon the 
pedestal as a man apart. But when to this is added his 
transcendent genius, his marvelous eloquence, his un- 
faltering fidelity to the cause of freedom, his impec- 
cable integrity, and his almost primitive espousal of 
the cause of Catholic emancipation, he looms as one 
of the truly colossal figures of all history. Before him 
there were statesmen in Ireland who had their dreams 
of nationality, but he was the first whose conception 
of the nation embraced the Catholics. The nation of 
Flood's dream was a nation dominated by a small fac- 
tion — a nation of bigotry. It was his successor who 
extended the boundaries to embrace all the people. 
Aside from the things he did and the things he stood 

46 



HENRY GRATTAN 47 

for, the character of the man has given him preemi- 
nence in the estimation of posterity. He is the one 
paternal figure in Irish history — the one leader whose 
gentleness, goodness, graciousness are suggestive of 
Washington. 



The theory of heredity and environment is given a 
blow in the case of Henry Grattan, whose father was 
a slave of the Castle and an enemy of the Catholics. 
The pet aversion of his father was Doctor Lucas, the 
eccentric patriot, from whom the son received the 
ideas that were to dominate his life. This divergence 
in the views of father and son was of early develop- 
ment and it tended to sadden the youth of the future 
leader. 

It was not until he entered Dublin University in his 
seventeenth year, in 1763, that he began to disclose the 
exceptional ability that was to take him so far. An in- 
teresting feature of his college career is the fact that 
his one and only rival for scholastic honors was the 
same infamous Lord Clare who divided with him the 
choice prizes of the university. Our most satisfactory 
view of this period of Grattan's life is to be had in the 
voluminous correspondence with a classmate in which 
he is exhibited as a melancholy and poetic youth 
dreaming of a retirement to some quiet country lodg- 
ing where he might "enjoy poverty and independ- 
ency." We are led to believe by his biographers that 
this tendency to melancholy was born of the attitude 
of the father toward the liberal leanings of the son. 
If such were the true explanation it might account for 




48 THE IRISH ORATORS 



the apparent lack of political ambition which may have 
been suppressed out of deference to his sire. Certain 
it is that his studies at this time do not convince the 
reader of the sincerity of his wish for the obscurity of 
solitude. We find him fairly living with Lord Boling- 
broke by whose "superiority as a reasoner and orator" 
he was greatly impressed — reading, analyzing, memo- 
rizing the choice specimens of his eloquence. Among 
the classic poets his favorite was Virgil, and strangely 
enough his favorite modern English poet was Pope, 
whom he thought possessed of a "correctness and ele- 
gance superior to any author" with some passages 
"where he is no less sublime." 

When in his twenty-first year he passed over to 
London to study law at the Temple we find him still 
whimsically writing of the charms of country soli- 
tudes and devoting himself with significant assiduity to 
the study of politics and eloquence from the galleries 
of the lords. It was in looking down upon the per- 
formances of the majestic Chatham that the Irish 
student found a fit rival for his beloved Bolingbroke, 
and there can be no doubt but that the passionate ora- 
torical outbursts of the great commoner and his the- 
atrical delivery made a profound and permanent 
impression upon the youth in the gallery. The legal 
studies were almost wholly neglected and he became 
obsessed with politics, absorbed in his studies of parlia- 
mentary procedure, and parliamentary eloquence. The 
story is told that his landlady beseeched his friends to 
take him away because he was out of his mind — this 
idea being based on the fact that he sometimes walked 
up and down in her garden half the night speaking 
passionately to himself, and addressing some phantom 



HENRY GRATTAN 49 

of the fancy as "Mr. Speaker." During his residence 
in England he shared chambers at the Temple with a 
friend with whom he took a house in Windsor Forest 
where he could dip into that poetic rusticity of which 
he was ever very fond. He loved the beautiful land- 
scape, the romantic scenery that surrounded his abode, 
and not infrequently he would spend the whole of a 
moonlight night meandering through the country, ora- 
torically improvising to the stars. On one of his ram- 
bles he suddenly found himself confronting a gibbet, 
and pausing, he began fervently to apostrophize the 
chains, when he felt a hand upon his shoulder and 
turned to face a stranger whose astonishing interroga- 
tion — "How in the devil did you get down," appealed 
immensely to his Irish sense of humor. 

On his return to Ireland he found the fashionable 
portion of the country turning with avidity to private 
theatricals for diversion, and it was in connection with 
this pastime that he was to become intimately asso- 
ciated with another public character who was destined 
to feel the sting of his lash. The country life of the 
Irish aristocracy of that period was brilliant and ele- 
gant, and for a time we find Grattan, a handsome 
youth, with his share of romantic notions, passing 
from country house to country house, participating in 
the presentation of light comedies with an occasional 
tragedy to give dignity to the vogue. As we have seen 
in the sketch of Flood he did not shrink from under- 
taking a Shakesperian role. Thus dashing off clever 
verses to the ladies, and spouting dramatic lines from 
the stage, he seemed for a season to have abandoned 
all high ambition, but who shall say that this experi- 
ence did not contribute materially to his preparation 



so 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



for that more exalted theater in which he was to 
move. Even in his meanderings among the country 
houses, however, he found time for serious occupation 
and we find him engaged with Flood in the study of 
eloquence, and gathering inspiration from the older 
man for the political career toward which he may have 
been unconsciously tending. 

In his twenty-fifth year he suddenly left Ireland and 
went to Paris, but he soon deserted the gaieties of the 
capital for the rural scenery of France, and we find 
him taking a leisurely sentimental journey to Vernon, 
and along the banks of the Loire. 

Returning to Dublin in 1772 he was called to the 
Irish bar. In view of his own confession it may be 
said that he knew very little of the law, and it is certain 
that he was temperamentally unfitted for its practise. 
He appears to have decided to buckle down to his pro- 
fession — but his decision, like a New Year's resolu- 
tion, was broken lightly, and his name never figured 
in the proceedings of Four Courts. Fortunately, how- 
ever, his distant association with the profession threw 
him into a circle of remarkable men, all of whom were 
to play brilliant and conspicuous parts in the political 
drama of the country. His group of friends embraced 
some of the choicest spirits of the time. These men 
formed a club, known as "The Society of Granby 
Row" and met frequently at one another's houses to 
discuss the politics of the day. It was here that Grat- 
tan took the postgraduate course that prepared him 
for public life. The presiding genius of the company 
was Charlemont. What a remarkable patriot! Un- 
mindful of personal ambition he was ever ambitious 
for Ireland, and it was he who gave to public life Ed- 




James Ramsay Photograph by Geoghegan 

Henry Grattan 

From a copy made for Lady Laura Grattan by Sir Thomas A. Jones, P.R.H.A. 

for the purpose of presentation to the National Gallery of Ireland, 

of the portrait in the possession of the Grattan family 



HENRY GRATTAN 51 

mund Burke, Henry Flood, Henry Grattan, Lord 
Plunkett and many others. We have from the pen of 
Grattan one picture of an Attic evening at the home 
of Dennis Daly, a hurricane of debate, where they sat 
at table — for they were convivial souls — with books 
scattered all about them, at their elbows, at their feet, 
conversing about the wrongs of Ireland and the most 
effective method for the righting of them. Little won- 
der that such associations should have given the 
proper bent to Grattan's career! The sentimental 
dreams of rustic retirement vanished in the white light 
of this virile company, and, under the inspiration of 
their encouragement, Henry Grattan determined to 
dedicate his genius to the land of his love. Lord 
Charlemont eagerly paved the way to parliament, and 
thus, just at the time when the leadership of Flood 
was compromised by the enervating and corrupting in- 
fluence of the Castle, and the patriot party was with- 
out a leader of genius sufficiently commanding, Henry 
Grattan took the oath as a member of the Irish house 
of commons and entered upon his political career. 

II 

The period at which Grattan entered the Irish par- 
liament was critical, owing partly to the economic con- 
ditions growing out of the American revolution. By 
proclamation of the government an embargo had been 
laid upon the export of provisions from Irish ports, 
resulting in the utmost distress among the people. 
The linen trade declined and thousands of artisans 
were thrown out into the street without means of sup- 
port. The industrial life but reflected the dire condi- 






52 [THE IRISH ORATORS 

tions of the mart, and in every sphere of life, and in 
every locality, the utmost indignation against the gov- 
ernmental action was openly expressed. Meanwhile 
the expenses of government had been growing apace 
and the notorious pension list had been extended out 
of all proportion with the common decencies of things. 
Amazing as it may seem to one unfamiliar with the 
attitude of arbitrary power toward public opinion, this, 
of all times, was selected for increasing official salaries. 
Such being the situation, it is not surprising to see 
Grattan joining forces with the opposition, and within 
four days after taking the oath, we find him stoutly 
supporting a motion on the embargo to the effect "that 
the attempt to suspend law, under the color of the pre- 
rogative of the crown is illegal." His speech on this 
occasion, while inadequately reported, attracted wide 
attention, the Dublin press laying particular stress 
upon his "spontaneous flow of natural eloquence." 
Thus from his initial speech he ranked among the 
foremost of the orators. A little later he took it upon 
himself to move for retrenchment in expenses, and 
in his speech in support of his motion, he returned to 
the attack on the embargo and opened up vigorously 
upon the pension evil. The most interesting phase of 
this speech lies in the fact that Charles James Fox, 
who was then in Dublin, occupied a seat on the floor, 
and was greatly impressed by the eloquence of the 
young orator. He sought an opportunity to meet 
Grattan socially and from this meeting developed the 
close and ardent friendship destined to have its effect 
on the political history of the times. A little later we 
find Grattan renewing his attack upon the embargo, 



HENRY GRATTAN 53 

» 

the pension list, and the increased salaries in a motion 
for an address to the king, and all to no avail. 

Meanwhile conditions were becoming desperate. 
The power in London was either ignorant of, or indif- 
ferent to, the fate of the green isle, and about this time 
Lord North, in merry mood, was declaring that 
"everything was a scene of festivity in Ireland." So 
far was this from the truth that even the government 
was reduced to the humiliating and disgraceful neces- 
sity of negotiating a loan from a private banking- 
house of Dublin to prevent the complete dissolution of 
the state. The banking house of LaTouche responded 
to the pitiful cry for succor with a loan of twenty 
thousand pounds, but this proved to be but a drop in 
the bucket of necessity. Another appeal was made to 
the private banking house, but the bankers declined to 
increase the government's indebtedness, and the state 
stood dissolved in fact, if not by open confession of 
authority. To add to the desperation of the situation 
an invasion from France was feared and the govern- 
ment admitted its inability to put into the field a mili- 
tary force of sufficient magnitude to protect the coun- 
try from the foreign enemy. Then there sprang into 
existence that marvelous and immortal body of men 
known as the Volunteers. 

This tragic situation was Ireland's opportunity. 
None were so blind they could not see the mockery of 
submitting to commercial restrictions ruinous to trade 
from a government so weak, and the demand rose 
from all classes and sections for free trade. The press 
teemed with articles voicing the popular desire. The 
Volunteers passed resolutions of similar import. The 



54 THE IRISH ORATORS 

proposal was made that the people should buy only- 
articles of Irish manufacture and the response was 
spontaneous and enthusiastic. The hour of Ireland's 
redemption from commercial bondage had struck. 

No one else, saw this opportunity so quickly as Henry 
Grattan. He determined to seize it without delay. He 
laid aside, for a season, all other ideas of reform to 
concentrate his efforts in behalf of trade and manufac- 
tures. And so one day, in company with Daly and 
Burgh, he went down to the little town of Bray upon 
the coast to prepare the proper motion and perfect 
plans for the parliamentary struggle. 

Meanwhile the government had been busily em- 
ployed exerting every possible influence to prevent the 
intended motion from being made. 

The debate following the presentation of the Grat- 
tan amendment w T as prolific of surprises. Hussey 
Burgh, a member of the government, declared that 
with some slight alteration in the commencement 
of the amendment he would heartily support it. This 
was quickly agreed to. Then Flood, not to be outdone 
by his rival, suggested the substitution of the plain 
words "free trade" in lieu of "free export and import," 
and Grattan hastened to accept the suggestion. The 

1 CO 

demoralization of the forces of the Castle made oppo- 
sition impractical and the amendment to the address 
was passed without one dissenting vote. And this 
splendid triumph was won by Grattan against the ad- 
vice of practically all his trusted friends ! When the 
entire house marched through the streets, lined with 
the Volunteers, on its way to the Castle a new day 
dawned for Ireland. The giant had awakened from 
its slumbers. The novelty of the people's representa- 



HENRY GRATTAN 55 

tives asserting the right to legislate for Ireland touched 
the imaginations of the masses who throng&d the 
streets, cheering the members as they passed. 

The king's reply was, as expected, an evasion, 
couched in the meaningless phraseology of hope. But 
the day of procrastination had passed. The Volun- 
teers, under arms, were an ominous menace to the 
Castle, and one daring soul asserted on the floor of the 
house that the reform would be given by parliament 
or be taken by the Volunteers! The government 
quickly seized on this ultimatum in an attempt to crip- 
ple the patriots and divert the issue, only to be met by 
Grattan with a vigorous defense of the Volunteers and 
an assertion of their right, as citizens, to direct the 
course of their parliamentary representatives. These 
armed patriots likewise accepted the challenge, and at 
numerous meetings the representatives were instructed 
to vote supplies for no more than six months. 

The people were now in ugly mood. The Volun- 
teers paraded in the capital while the multitude 
cheered. The city was illuminated in celebration of 
the success of Grattan's motion. Members on their 
way to the house were stopped by citizens with pistols 
and swords and ordered to vote a Short Money bill. 
The carriage of the speaker was halted and he was 
forced to take an oath. The militia was called out — 
only to fall back before the jeers and laughter of the 
people. 

The house met and Grattan rose and calmly offered 
a short resolution : 

"Resolved that a! this Ume it would be inexpedient 
to grant new taxes." 



56 L THE IRISH ORATORS 

This resolution was passed unanimously. 

The next day it was moved that the appropriated 
duties should be granted for six months only — and 
this carried by a large majority. It was in the discus- 
sion of this motion that Ireland found her Patrick 
Henry when Burgh exclaimed amid the greatest ex- 
citement : 

"Talk not to me of peace; Ireland is not in a state 
of peace; it is smothered war. England has sown her 
laws like dragon's teeth, and they have sprung up in 
armed men." 

This utterance lost BurgH his place in the govern- 
ment, but it won from Grattan a more precious gift in 
the form of the tribute that "the gates of promotion 
were shut as those of glory opened." 

Rapidly the Irish movement was now progressing 
along the lines of the American revolution. In Burgh 
was found the Patrick Henry; in Alderman Horan, a 
Dublin merchant, was disclosed the Boston spirit. Au- 
daciously taking the ground that the English parlia- 
ment could not bind Ireland, he tendered his goods for 
export at the custom house. Thoroughly alarmed, the 
custom official notified the lord lieutenant, who, in 
turn, communicated with London. The situation was 
filled with dynamite. The least- spark, — and it would 
have exploded in revolution. Fortunately, perhaps, 
Grattan and his followers managed to prevent a pre- 
mature uprising of the people, until Lord North, re- 
alizing the fatuity of further resistance, yielded to the 
inevitable, and the free trade measures of 1779 were 
enacted into law. Grattan was at this time a young 
man of thirty- three years! 



j- ,, HENRY GRATTAN 5Z 

The free trade victory failed, however, to lull the 
people to sleep again. The concession had been all but 
forced at the point of the bayonet, and the nation re- 
alized the insecurity of its position. It knew that the 
same power that had granted the concession could 
withdraw it later on, and the Volunteers, with the 
hearty cooperation of Grattan, determined to press 
without delay for the modification of Poyning's law 
and the repeal of the sixth of George First, which de- 
clared the dependency of Ireland. 

When Grattan served notice that he would ask for 
a declaration of Irish rights the Castle became thor- 
oughly alive to the fact that a movement had been 
launched which aimed at nothing less than the inde- 
pendence of the Irish parliament, and all the creatures 
of government were set to work to canvass against the 
declaration and the repeal. The awakened people ral- 
lied enthusiastically around the young tribune, and 
petitions poured in from mass meetings of citizens and 
conventions of the Volunteers. To appreciate the true 
superiority of Grattan it is but necessary to know that 
even his most intimate friends and the most ardent pa- 
triots looked upon his new proposition with feelings of 
genuine alarm. He was censured by the Burgh who had 
supported the free trade movement, and by the Daly 
who had cooperated with him in that work. Lord 
Charlemont timidly held back, and from London came 
the frantic message of Edmund Burke, "Will no one 
speak to this mad man? will no one stop this mad man 
Grattan?" 

In truth it was an enormous responsibility Grattan 
had taken upon himself — the salvation of his country, 
the righting of the multitudinous wrongs of years. 



58 THE IRISH ORATORS 

He was young, inexperienced in the intricacies of poli- 
tics, without influential family connections, without a 
powerful personal following of any description, and 
so poor that, according to his own statement, he could 
scarcely boast of an income of five hundred pounds a 
year. Some of the truest patriots and ablest statesmen 
in Ireland urged him to desist lest the ire of the Eng- 
lish, being aroused, would lead to the withdrawal of 
the few concessions granted, and the infliction of 
greater hardships upon the country. Beset by the im- 
portunities of his friends, Grattan left Dublin and 
sought the solitude of Celbridge Abbey and the advice 
of his uncle. There on the banks of the beautiful river 
"amid the groves and bowers of Swift and Vanessa" 
he confirmed his purpose. 

When on April nineteenth, 1780, he rose in the 
awesome silence of the house to present the resolu- 
tions to the effect "That his most excellent majesty, by 
and with the advice and consent of the lords and com- 
mons of Ireland, are the only power competent to 
enact laws to bind Ireland/' Ireland became a nation — 
for she had found a Voice. His speech on this occa- 
sion was the greatest of his career. He spoke with a 
great volume of tone and appeared to many who 
heard him as one inspired. With rapidity and fire, 
with a commanding and maje'stic eloquence that 
thrilled and captivated, he compelled the respect of his 
enemies and won the undying admiration of his people 
and of posterity. 

With the boldness of defiance and the consciousness 
of power he spoke the frank language of a free man 
and in conclusion thrilled and startled the house and 
galleries with that almost inspired peroration which 



Henry grattan $9 

has never been surpassed and seldom equaled by any 
orator in the world's history : 

"Do not tolerate that power which blasted you for a 
century, which shattered your loom, banished your man- 
ufactures, dishonored your peerage, and stopped the 
growth of your people ; do not, I say, be bribed by any 
export of woolen, or an import of sugar, and permit 
that power which has thus withered the land to remain 
in your country and have existence in your pusillanimity. 

"Do not suffer the arrogance of England to imagine 
a surviving hope in the fears of Ireland; do not send 
the people to their own resolves for liberty, passing by 
the tribunals of justice and the high court of parlia- 
ment; neither imagine that, by any formation of apol- 
ogy, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, 
still less to your children, who will sting you with their 
curses in your grave for having interposed between 
them and their maker, robbing them of an immense oc- 
casion, and losing an opportunity which you did not 
create, and can never restore. 

"Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your 
age of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrec- 
tion, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, 
shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe— that here 
the principal men among us fell into mimic trances of 
gratitude — they were awed by a weak ministry, and 
bribed by an empty treasury — and when liberty was 
within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding 
doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal 
of the nation encouraged and urged them on, that they 
fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold. 

"I might, as a constituent, come to your bar, and de- 
mand my liberty. I do call upon you, by the laws of 
the land and their violation, by the instruction of eight- 
een counties, by the arms, inspiration and providence 
of the present moment, tell us the rule by which we 
shall go — assert the laws of Ireland— declare the liberty 
of the land. 



60 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"I will not be answered by a public lie, in the way 
of an amendment; neither, speaking for the subject's 
freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing 
but to breathe, in this our island, in common with my 
fellow subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, 
unless it be the ambition to break your chains, and con- 
template your glory. I never will be satisfied so long 
as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the 
British chain clanking to his rags; he may be naked, 
he shall not be in irons ; and I do see the time is at hand, 
the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted; and 
though great men should apostatize, yet the cause will 
live; and though the public speaker should die, yet the 
immortal fire shall outlive the humble organ which con- 
veyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the 
holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive 
him." 



When Grattan sat down after his masterful effort 
of two hours' duration and his resolution was sec- 
onded by the father of Lord Castlereagh — a bit of the 
irony of fate — the lines were distinctly drawn. in the 
battle for the legislative independence of Ireland. The 
effect of the speech, magical though it was in the 
house, was destined to exercise a far more remarkable 
influence upon the awakened country. It was like a 
fire bell clanging in the night — the tocsin, calling the 
people to arms. Its immediate results were unsatisfac- 
tory. Lord Clare followed with an abusive speech lev- 
eled at the Volunteers, and Henry Flood urged a post- 
ponement of the issue on the rather ridiculous ground 
that all might be won by gratitude. Happily, through 
a clever parliamentary device of Burgh, there was no 
adverse parliamentary record of the resolutions. The 
day following, the lord lieutenant wrote to England 



HENRY GRATTAN 61 

to the effect that Grattan had spoken "with great abil- 
ity, and with a great warmth and enthusiasm." 

Henceforth Grattan concentrated his energies to bring 
about the early consummation of his plans for Ireland, 
and strangely enough the government, through a seem- 
ingly blind stupidity, played into his hands in prac- 
tically every move it made. The people were predis- 
posed toward the plan in the beginning, but the series 
of unpopular measures thrust upon the country imme- 
diately after Grattan had offered his resolutions served 
to intensify the determination of the nation to achieve 
its independence. Hardly had Ireland won her com- 
mercial rights when England sought to impose a duty 
on raw sugar, thereby dealing a serious blow to the 
sugar refineries of the country, and forcing upon the 
popular mind the insecurity of the concessions granted. 
This stupid move inflamed the people. They met in 
mass meetings all over the island to voice their protest 
and pledge themselves to consume or import none of 
that species of sugar. 

The seed Grattan had sown now fell on fertile soil 
Following close upon this unfortunate incident came 
the controversy over the Mutiny bill, an obnoxious 
law which the ministers proposed to impose upon the 
Irish. This indicated a disposition on the part of the 
government to tyrannize over Ireland, alarmed even 
the most conservative, and aroused the intense indig- 
nation of the masses. 

Owing to the fact that the parliament was yet more 
subservient than the people the perpetual Mutiny bill 
was enacted, and Grattan, determined to use the un- 
popular measure to fan into a conflagration the indig- 
nation of the people, served notice that at the begin- 



62 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ning of the next session he would move the repeal of 
the law. True to his word he brought the Mutiny bill 
before the house at the earliest opportunity in a speech 
which rang with a militancy that thrilled the country. 

"However astonishing it may appear," he began im- 
pressively, "I rise in the 18th century to vindicate 
Magna Charta, sanctified as it is by the authority of 
six hundred years. I call upon gentlemen to teach Brit- 
ish privileges to an Irish senate. I quote the laws of 
England, first, because they are laws; secondly, because 
they are franchises of Irishmen as well as of English- 
men. I am not come to say what is expedient; I come 
to demand a right, and I hope that I am speaking to 
men who know and feel their rights, and not to corrupt 
consciences and inferior capacities. I beg gentlemen to 
tell me why, and for what reason, the Irish nation was 
deprived of the British constitution; the limitation of 
the Mutiny bill was one of the great hinges of the con- 
stitution, and ought it then to be perpetual in Ireland. 
. . . We want not an army as Great Britain does ; 
for an army is not our protection : we keep up an army 
only to strengthen the arm of prerogative; and in the 
hour of danger, this boasted army is not found at home 
to support you. Was your army your protection when 
Sir Richard Heron told you you must trust to God and 
your country? You want it not for defense, you want 
it not for ambition; you have no foreign dominions to 
preserve, and your people are amenable to law. Our 
duties are of a different nature-^-to watch with inces- 
sant vigils the cradle of the constitution ; to rear an in- 
fant state, to protect a rising trade, to foster a growing 
people : among all the varieties of secretaries and of re- 
ligions, everything here is unanimity; the new world 
has overturned the prejudices of the old; it has let in 
a light upon mankind, and the modern philosophy has 
taught men to look upon each other as brethren, not as 
enemies. We are free, we are united — persecution is 



, t HENRY : GRATT AN 63 

t r. 

dead; the Protestant religion is trie child of the consti- 
tution, the Presbyterian is the father, the Roman Cath- 
olic is not an enemy to it: we are united in one great 
national community. What was our situation formerly? 
We were a gentry without pride, and a people without 
privilege; every man was convinced of his rights, but 
until lately every man had neglected them. The British 
constitution lay upon the ground like a giant's armor 
in a dwarf's custody : at length the nation asserted itself, 
and though the declaration of rights was not carried, 
which I proposed as a measure safe and unobnoxious, 
yet our spirit made us a nation. British supremacy fell 
upon the earth like a spent thunderbolt: the minister 
feared to look at it ; the people were fain to touch it." 

Thus did he make the unpopularity of the Perpetual 
Mutiny bill do battle for the Declaration of Rights ; thus 
did he feed the growing sense of nationality; thus did 
he associate in the popular mind the liberty of the peo- 
ple with their unanimity and religious toleration. The 
motion was defeated in the house, but Grattan had 
given more ammunition to the people. 

And the people were awake as never before. Espe- 
cially was this true of the Volunteers, who had now 
come to be associated even in the minds of the most 
conservative with the liberty of the subject. Attacked 
by the brutality of Lord Clare, their motives impugned, 
their characters assailed, they now became the militant 
nucleus of the movement toward national independ- 
ence. In their beginning representing the masses, they 
now became truly representative of every Irish ele- 
ment. The aristocracy joined their ranks. The worth, 
the wealth, the genius of the land marched with the 
Volunteers. And at their head was that Washington 
of Erin — the accomplished Charlemont, All over the 



64 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



island these men were on the march. The forty thou- 
sand had become one hundred thousand. The reviews 
of the corps by the old aristocracy of the country 
served notice now that they had become synonymous 
with Ireland. Military associations sprang up as if 
by magic in every nook and corner of the country, and 
the men, clothed with Irish manufacture, soon took on 
the appearance of seasoned soldiers ready to do battle 
upon the field. The women wove the colors that they 
carried. The churches bestowed their benediction in 
their contributions. The press applauded their spirit 
and urged them to stand firm. The government, 
amazed and alarmed, contemplated prosecutions but 
quickly abandoned the idea in the realization that it 
would precipitate a revolution. When Lord Charle- 
mont went to the North to review the various corps of 
that section he was accompanied by Henry Grattan, 
who stood by his side and saluted the men upon whom 
now rested the salvation of the state. 

Meanwhile the people became cognizant of their 
parliament. They had become educated to believe that 
the members of the house were their members, by all 
the rules of political ethics, responsible to their will. 
They began to flock to the gallery of the house, and 
day after day the seven hundred seats were filled 
with eager patriots looking down grimly upon the par- 
liamentary battle-field. The sugar tax had made con- 
verts for the Declaration of Rights ; the Mutiny bill had 
played into the hands of Grattan; the refusal to restore 
the rights of the Catholics was the last straw. And 
then came the great historic convention of the Volun- 
teers at Dungannon and the resolution to the effect 
that "the claim of any body of men, other than the 



HENRY; GRATTAN' '65 

king, lords and commons of Ireland, to make laws to 
bind this kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, and a 
grievance." 

The country was now aflame. The resolution of 
independence was echoed defiantly by every Volunteer 
corps and military association. The spirit of revolu- 
tion was in the air — and at the head of the revolution- 
ists stood Grattan. Just at this juncture, with Ireland 
in arms, and England at the mercy of the Volunteers, 
he again moved an address to the king on the Declara- 
tion of Rights. After having examined from every 
angle the claims of England to legislate for Ireland 
and exposed the flimsy foundation on which they 
rested, he proceeded in language that must have sug- 
gested to the minister the rattle of musketry: 



"This brings the claim of England to the mere ques- 
tion of force: it is a right which Swift, I think, has 
explained — the right of the grenadier to take the prop- 
erty of the naked man. I add, this man has now got- 
ten back arms, and begs to get back his property. Thus 
the question remaining is the question of ability; and 
in considering this, you are not to contemplate alone 
the difficulties in your front; you are to look back, too, 
upon the strength of your rear. The claim by conquest 
naturally leads to the subject of the Volunteers. You 
have an immense force, the shape of a much greater 
of different religions, but of one political faith, kept 
up for three years defending the country ; for the gov- 
ernment took away her troops and consigned her de- 
fense to the people — defending the government, I say, 
aiding the civil power, and pledged to maintain the 
liberty of Ireland to the last drop of their blood. Who 
is this body ? The commons of Ireland — and you at 
the head of them: it is more — it is society in its great- 
est possible description ; it is the property — it is the soul 



66 ,THE IRISH" ORATORS 

of the country armed: tney, fof this bo'dy, have yet no 
adequate name. In the summer of 1780 they agree to 
a declaration of right ; in the summer of 1781 they hear 
that the French are at sea; in the heat and hurricane 
of their zeal for liberty, they stop; without delay, they 
offer to march; their march waits only for the com- 
mands of the Castle: the Castle where the sagacious 
courtier had abandoned his uniform, finds it prudent to 
receive a self-armed association: that self-armed asso- 
ciation, this age has beheld; posterity will admire — will 
wonder. The delegates of that self -armed association 
enter the mansion of the government, ascend the steps, 
advance to the presence of the lord lieutenant, and make 
a tender of their lives and fortunes, with the form and 
reception of an authenticated establishment. A painter 
might here display and contrast the loyalty of a courtier 
with that of a Volunteer; he would paint the courtier 
hurrying off his uniform, casting away his arms, filling 
his pocket with the public money, and then presenting 
to his sovereign naked servitude; he would paint the 
Volunteer seizing his charters, handling his arms, form- 
ing his columns, improving his discipline, demanding 
his rights, and then, at the foot of the throne, making 
a tender of armed allegiance. He had no objection to 
die by the side of England ; but he must be found dead 
with her charter in his hand." 



Such language as this, voicing the unanimous senti- 
ment of the people, backed by one hundred thousand 
determined men in arms, had its effect upon the states- 
men in London. Dublin Castle found itself confront- 
ing concession or revolution. The English element 
began to weaken. And as it began to weaken, Grattan 
pushed forward with an announcement that he would 
again bring forward the Declaration of Rights, and 
moved that the speaker write circular letters to all 
members ordering them to be in their seats on April 



HENRY GRATTAN 67 

sixteenth, 1782. The motion was carried and now for 
the first time the statesmen in England really under- 
stood the import of the proceedings in Ireland during 
the two preceding years. Meanwhile the Whigs had 
come into power, and Fox and Rockingham had not 
only pretended a partiality for Grattan, but had always 
asserted their devotion to the Irish cause. Suddenly, 
unexpectedly, they found themselves facing the early 
necessity of making their pretensions good. They now 
began to play for time, to negotiate a postponement of 
the question. They finally enlisted Charlemont in the 
cause of postponement and he was sent to persuade Grat- 
tan' s agreement. He found the orator on a sick bed. 
"No time, no time," he exclaimed impatiently; and 
then he dictated a letter to Rockingham to the effect 
that they could not delay, that they were pledged to the 
people, that they could not postpone the question be- 
cause the measures were public property. Defeated in 
this, Fox and Rockingham now begged both Grattan 
and Charlemont to accept office in the hope of thereby 
securing time, but their importunities were politely 
declined. This meant the Declaration of Rights or 
war. The government had but five thousand troops 
in Ireland and there were one hundred thousand Vol- 
unteers. 

Meanwhile the Duke of Portland was sent over as 
lord lieutenant, and the resolutions to be proposed 
were submitted to him. He read them carefully and 
suggested some modifications tending to soften the 
blow to England only to have them politely rejected. 
Right on the heels of this rejection Grattan sent over 
to the ministers in London an enumeration of his de- 
mands : the relinquishment of the legislative and appel- 



68 [THE IRISH ORATORS 

lant judicature by the British parliament, or the repeal 
of the sixth of George First; the discontinuance of the 
practise of altering or suppressing bills; the repeal of 
the Perpetual Mutiny bill, with a new bill limited to 
two years; the limitation and regulation of his maj- 
esty's forces; the radical modification of Poyning's 
law. This was an ultimatum — and it meant concession 
or war ! 

The tables were now verily turned. England was at 
the mercy of the sister island. She could not postpone. 
She could not bribe. She could not frighten. She 
could not fight. And thus it was she surrendered to 
the inevitable and drifted. 

In those days the home of Grattan, in Dublin, was 
directly across from the Castle and for several days 
preceding the date set for the Declaration, the house 
swarmed with anxious visitors. The avenues were 
blocked with carriages of celebrities who were attend- 
ing, not a reception at the Castle, but a patriotic levee 
at Grattan's. The orator was in ill health, but the 
enthusiasm of the moment sustained him, and when the 
day dawned it found him thoroughly prepared. The 
capital swarmed with the Volunteers — cavalry, in- 
fantry, artillery, on the quays, the bridges, the ap- 
proaches to the two houses of parliament. At an 
early hour the galleries of the house were packed with 
men and women whose faces glowed with the inspira- 
tion of the occasion. The regular troops made a 
pathetic showing as they formed a passage for the 
lord lieutenant on his way to deliver the king's mes- 
sage. Accompanied by Daly, Burgh, Yelverton and 
the father of Lord Castlereagh, Grattan left his home 
and went to the house. 






HENRY GRATTAN 69 

The message from his majesty was read. The mo- 
tion of thanks was offered. Then Grattan rose, pale, 
worn, bearing evidence of his illness and showing 
traces of intense anxiety. The silence of a sepulcher 
was on the house. The crowded galleries leaned for- 
ward. Then, after looking proudly upon the scene, the 
orator began in a clear exultant tone : 

"I am now to address a free people ; ages have passed 
away, and this is the first moment in which you could 
be distinguished by that appellation. 

"I have spoken on the subject of your liberty so often, 
that I have nothing to add, and have only to admire 
by what heaven-directed steps you have proceeded until 
the whole faculty of the nation is braced up to the act 
of her own deliverance. 

"I found Ireland on her knees, I watched over her 
with eternal solicitude ; I have traced her progress from 
injury to arms, from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, 
spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed. Ireland 
is now a nation. In that new character I hail her, and 
bowing to her august presence, I say, esto perpetua. 

"She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks 
to her governor for his rapine, and to her king for his 
oppression ; nor is she now a squabbling, fretful sectary, 
perplexing her little wits, and firing her furious stat- 
utes with bigotry, sophistries, disabilities and death, to 
transmit to posterity insignificance and war." 

With a glowing enthusiasm he compared the state 
of Ireland with that of less fortunate nations, glorified 
in the fact that she had won her liberty rather than 
coaxed it from concessions that might be withdrawn, 
declared that the repeal of the English claim under the 
operation of a treaty would be irrevocable, and ex- 
pressed his satisfaction that the people of all religions 



70 THE IRISH ORATORS 

were a party to the treaty and were bound to preserve 
it. He then passed on to the grievances that had 
wrought the revolution. 

"Let other nations," he said, "be deceived by the soph- 
istry of courts. Ireland has studied politics in the 
lair of oppression, and, taught by suffering, compre- 
hends the rights of subjects and the duty of kings. Let 
other nations imagine that subjects are made for the 
monarch, but we conceive that kings and parliaments, 
like kings, are made for the subjects. The house of 
commons, honorable and right honorable as it may be; 
the lords, noble and illustrious as we pronounce them, 
are not original, but derivative. Session after session 
they move their periodical orbit about the source of 
their being, the nation; even the king's majesty must 
fulfil his due and tributary course round that great lu- 
minary; and created by its beam, and upheld by its 
attraction, must incline to that light, or go out of the 
system." 

Enumerating the wrongs perpetrated upon Ireland 
and denying the authority upon which they were 
wrought he proceeded: 

"The government has contended for the usurpation 
and the people for the laws. His majesty's late minis- 
ters imagined that they had quelled the country when 
they had bought the newspapers; and they represented 
us as wild men, and our cause -as visionary; and they 
pensioned a set of wretches to abuse both : but we took 
little account of them or their proceedings, and we 
waited and we watched, and we moved, as it were, on 
our native hills, with the minor remains of our parlia- 
mentary army, until the minority became Ireland." 

With a few explanatory words he concluded by 
moving the Declaration of Rights. The government, 



HENRY GRATTAN 71 

helpless and without a policy, offered no resistance, 
and the motion carried without a division. The news 
spread like lightning. The Volunteers sustained their 
reputation by the dignity of their decorum, but the 
people of Dublin gave way to transports of enthusi- 
asm, and at night the city was illuminated. The next 
day the Volunteers of Leicester, with Henry Flood in 
the chair, passed resolutions supporting Grattan and 
the Declaration and pledging their lives and fortunes. 

During the necessary delay on the part of England 
to accede the demands, Grattan remained quietly in 
his home, watching the proceedings across the channel 
with the keenest anxiety, for he had reached the firm 
determination that in the event of refusal he would 
make his appeal to the God of battles. He gave out 
that he had gone to the country and held no inter- 
course with the Castle. In due time, Charles James 
Fox, acting in good faith, took the necessary steps on 
the part of England — and Ireland achieved her legis- 
lative independence ! 

This concludes the most glorious and the happiest 
period of Grattan's career. He was to serve his coun- 
try with wonderful brilliancy and power for many 
years to come, but never again was he to attain such 
heights of achievement for his people. He had traced 
the progress of Ireland "from injury to arms, from 
arms to liberty" — and that was to constitute his claims 
on immortality. 

Ill 

Extreme popularity in the case of public men is al- 
most invariably followed with reaction, .and it was not 



72 THE IRISH ORATORS 

long until the popular idol to whom the grateful nation 
had voted a home after the passage of the Bill of 
Rights was made to feel the sharp tooth of ingrati- 
tude. The causes of this reaction in the case of Grat- 
tan have been set forth in the sketch of Flood who 
contributed, not a little, to the poisoning of the public 
mind in regard to his great rival. The controversy- 
over simple repeal and the action of the Volunteers, 
so embittered a large portion of his former followers 
that a conspiracy was actually formed to assault him 
one night on his way home from a dinner of the offi- 
cers of the military organizations. Confident of the 
rectitude of his intentions, and convinced of the wis- 
dom of his course Grattan maintained a dignified atti- 
tude throughout, and even after the famous exchange 
of philippics with Flood, the younger man supported 
the older in his fight for the parliamentary reform 
proposed by the Volunteers' convention. We learn in 
the correspondence between the minister and the lord 
lieutenant that the government had counted upon the 
opposition of Grattan to the proposed reform because 
of the relations of the two men, but it had failed to 
take into consideration the truly noble nature of the 
great orator who had given Ireland her independence. 
The first convincing evidence of the unfriendly atti- 
tude of the English ministry, and of the disposition to 
resort to trickery in their dealings with Ireland came 
with the double dealing incident to the commercial 
propositions. The prosperity of Ireland was affected 
in 1783 by the distress of the agricultural classes 
which reached every element in the country and led to 
the clamor for protecting duties for the manufac- 
turers. Grattan gave a reluctant consent to the propo- 



HENRY GRATTAN 73 

sitions which were to be incorporated in a treaty be- 
tween the two islands whereby Ireland was to obtain 
the right to export into England through Ireland, in 
return for the concession by Ireland of the surplus of 
the hereditary revenue. The propositions while seem- 
ingly good from the commercial point of view, were 
not considered wise by Grattan as a political measure, 
but he yielded to the popular demand and gave them 
his support. Acting upon the supposition that every- 
thing had been agreed to, the Irish parliament voted 
the payment of one hundred and forty thousand 
pounds as her part of the bargain, but she had hardly 
given this evidence of her good faith when Pitt 
brought into the English parliament eighteen entirely 
new propositions that were utterly impossible from 
the Irish point of view. One of these propositions 
would have bound Ireland to adopt such laws as Eng- 
land might pass relating to her commercial concerns. 
When these propositions, conceived in bad faith and 
in a spirit of trickery, were submitted to the Irish par- 
liament Grattan bitterly assailed them as being at war 
with the principles of the Irish revolution. 

"It is a market for a constitution," he said, "and a 
logic applicable to barter only, is applied to freedom. 
To qualify this dereliction of every principle and power, 
the surrender is made constitutional, that is, the Brit- 
ish market for the Irish constitution; the shadow of a 
market for the substance of a constitution. You are 
to reserve an option, trade or liberty; if you mean to 
come to the British market, you must pass under the 
British yoke. I object to this principle in every shape, 
whether you are, as the resolution was first^ worded, 
directly to transfer legislative power to the British par- 
liament; whether, as it was afterward altered, you are 






74 L THE IRISH ORATORS 

to covenant to subscribe her acts; or whether, as it is 
now softened, you are to take the chance of the British 
market, so long as you waive the blessings of the Brit- 
ish constitution — terms dishonorable, derogatory, incap- 
able of forming the foundation of any fair and friendly 
settlement, injurious to the political morality of the na- 
tion. I would not harbor a slavish principle, nor give 
it the hospitality of a night's lodging in a land of liberty. 
Slavery is like any other vice, tolerate, and you embrace. 
You should guard your constitution by settled maxims 
of honor, as well as wholesome rules of law; and one 
maxim should be never to tolerate a condition which 
trenches on the privilege of parliament, or derogates 
from the pride of the island. Liberal in matters of rev- 
enue, practical in matters of commerce; on these sub- 
jects I would be inexorable; if the genius of old Eng- 
land came to that bar, with the British constitution in 
one hand, and in the other an offer of all that England 
retains, or all that she has lost of commerce, I should 
turn my back on the latter, and pay my obeisance to 
the blessings of her constitution; for that constitution 
will give you commerce, and it was the loss of that con- 
stitution which deprived you of commerce. Why are 
you not now a woolen country? Because another coun- 
try regulated your trade. Why are you not now a 
country of re-export? Because another country regu- 
lated your navigation. I oppose the original terms as 
slavish, and I oppose the conditional clause as an artful 
way of introducing slavery, of soothing a high-spirited 
nation into submission by the ignominious delusion that 
she may shake off the yoke when she pleases, and once 
more become a free people. The direct unconstitutional 
proposition could not have been listened to, and there- 
fore resort is had to the only possible chance of destroy- 
ing the liberty of the people, by holding up the bright 
reversion of the British constitution, as the speculation 
of future liberty, as a consolation for present submis- 
sion." 



The defeat of these propositions had two important 






HENRY GRATTAN 75 

effects : it restored the popularity of Grattan, and in- 
curred for Ireland that bitter enmity in Pitt which 
was to persist with a devilish tenacity until the fateful 
purchase of the liberties of the Irish people. The spir- 
ited opposition of Grattan to the Pitt program revived 
the enthusiasm and confidence of the nation, and 
when, in speaking upon the address to the lord lieuten- 
ant a little later, the popular tribune, in reiterating his 
warning against the propositions, concluded with the 
promise to persist in his opposition : 

"Having expressed my fears lest this bill should be 
revived, I do declare that if such a measure, or any- 
thing like it, should hereafter be produced I shall be 
in my place to oppose the yoke, to oppose the system 
founded upon principles of empire, not commerce, rec- 
ommended by the language of insult, justified by depre- 
cating the real value and importance of Ireland, and 
accompanied with the surrender of the constitution and 
commerce, and of everything that is dear to this coun- 
try." 

It was such a spirit as that indicated in Grattan's 
speeches against the Pitt propositions that convinced 
the English ministers that Ireland proposed to take 
her legislative independence seriously, and it was prob- 
ably at this time that the systematic corruption of the 
Irish parliament was begun through the bribery of 
pensions. On this evil Grattan had pronounced views. 
It was a realization of this danger which had impelled 
him to support Flood's reform bill. It now led him 
to support the movement to correct the pension evil. 
When in the session of 1785 the subject was called to 
the attention of the house, Grattan startled the runners 
of the Castle by having the entire pension list read and 



76 THE IRISH ORATORS 

< 
made public. By thus turning on the light of publicity 
he hoped to deter those members who might be con- 
templating the sale of their influence. Nor did he stop 
with that alone. He followed it up with a speech of 
tremendous force, in which he called attention to the 
enormous increase in the pension list, and laid stress 
upon the fact that it had attained proportions equal to 
that of Great Britain. 

"Another argument," he said, "advanced in its de- 
fense, tells you that the new pension list, or the last 
catalogue, is small; Sir, it is greater than the produce 
of your new tax on hawkers and pedlers. Why con- 
tinue that tax? When I see the state repose itself on 
beggars, I pity and submit. But when I see the state 
give away its taxes thus eviscerated from the poor; 
when I see government come to the poor man's hovel 
for a part of his loaf, to scatter it; when I see govern- 
ment tax the pedler to pamper the pensioner, I blush 
for the extortion of the state, and reprobate an offense, 
that may be well called prodigality of rapine. 

"Sir, when gentlemen say that the new charge for 
pensions is small, let me assure them they need not 
be alarmed ; the charge will be much greater ; for, unless 
your interposition should deter, what else is there to 
check it? Will public poverty? No. New taxes? No. 
Gratitude for those taxes ? No. Principle ? No. Pro- 
fession? No. The love of fame or sense of infamy? 
No. Confined to no one description of merit, or want 
of character, under the authority of that list, every man, 
woman and child in Ireland have pretensions to become 
a public encumbrance; so that, since government went 
so far, I marvel that they have stopped, unless the pen 
fell out of their hand from fatigue, for it could not be 
from principle. 

"No, Sir, this list will go on; it will go on till the 
merchant shall feel it; until the manufacturer shall feel 
it; until the pension list shall take in its own hands the 



HENRY GRATTAN 7? 

key o£ taxation; and instead of taxing license to sell, 
shall tax the article and the manufacturer itself; until 
we shall lose our great commercial resource, a compara- 
tive exemption from taxes, the gift of our poverty, and 
get an accumulation of taxes to be the companion of 
our poverty; until public indignation shall cry shame 
upon us, and the morality of a serious and offended 
community shall call out for the interposition of the 
law." 

In the light of what the world now knows of the 
methods resorted to by Pitt and his Castle agents to 
influence the legislation of Ireland and ultimately to 
purchase the liberty of the people, it is not surprising 
that the speeches of Grattan, exposing the enormity of 
the pension evil, should have given great umbrage to 
the government. A little later, in the discussion of 
the Navigation Act, he increased his unpopularity in 
ministerial circles by insisting and proving that the 
act was intended to apply to Ireland as well as Eng- 
land. It was becoming increasingly impossible for a 
man to be a patriot in parliament without antagoniz- 
ing the government in all its policies. It was becoming 
almost impossible successfully to oppose the govern- 
ment because of the systematic corruption of members 
to which it was now resorting. 



IV 



It was in 1786 that Grattan began his fight for the 
righting of the wrongs due to tithes. The evils grow- 
ing out of tithes had now become a serious menace to 
the tranquillity of the country. It was the period of 
the Whiteboy disturbances. Instead of going into 



78 THE IRISH ORATORS 

the cause of this extensive uprising with the view to 
the tranquilizing of the people through a policy of 
reformation, Lord Clare brought in and pushed to 
passage a semi-barbarous bill to prevent tumultuous up- 
risings, a bill so brutal that Grattan aptly compared it 
to the laws of Draco. Although unable to prevent its 
passage Grattan did succeed in eliminating the worst 
feature, which authorized the destruction of a Catholic 
church in the event an unlawful oath should be ad- 
ministered, not in it, but adjoining it! The savagery 
of the government in dealing with the disturbances, 
directed Grattan's attention to the evil of tithes, an 
evil which reduced the peasantry to a condition as 
helpless and hopeless as that of the peasantry of France 
before the revolution. Laws were enacted, not for the 
protection of the poor against the extortion of the 
clergy and their cruel collectors, but for the purpose 
of facilitating the shameful robbery. The peasants 
were being reduced to a pitiful state of poverty, yet 
when attention was directed to their condition by 
Grattan, it was insolently asserted by Lord Clare that 
the blame was due entirely to the indolence of the 
people. After a few preliminary battles, Grattan of- 
fered a resolution providing for the appointment of a 
committee to ascertain if the discontent in the southern 
part of Ireland was due to tithes, and, if so, to recom- 
mend some plan of amelioration. His speech on this 
occasion, delivered February fourteenth, 1788, was 
one of the most eloquent and effective of his life. His 
heart had been deeply touched by the suffering of the 
people, his indignation aroused by the brutality of the 
authorities, his contempt inflamed by the rank hypoc- 
risy of a large portion of the .clergy who proposed, 



HENRY GRATTAN 79 

while preaching the Gospel of the Nazarene, to extort 
from the poor that they might live in luxury and ease. 
In a three hours' speech, which was statesmanlike, 
philosophic and philanthropic, he commanded the ad- 
miring attention of the house and even elicited from 
Lord Clare the compliment that it was one of the most 
marvelous displays of eloquence ever heard in the 
house of commons. After having set forth the rea- 
sons demanding an inquiry he proceeded : 

"Here let me return to and repeat the allegations, 
and call upon you once more to make the inquiry. It 
is alleged that in certain parishes of the south tithe has 
been demanded and paid for what, by law, was not 
liable to tithe; and that the ecclesiastical courts have 
countenanced the illegal exaction; and evidence is of- 
fered at your bar to prove the charges on oath. 

"Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? 
Will you inquire into it? 

"It is alleged that tithe proctors, in certain parishes 
of the south, do exact fees for agency, oppressive and 
illegal; and evidence to prove the charge is offered on 
oath. Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the 
fact? Will you inquire into it? 

"It is alleged that in certain parishes of the south 
tithes have been excessive, and have observed no equity 
for the poor, the husbandman, or the manufacturer ; and 
evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath. 

"Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? 
Will you inquire into it? 

"It is alleged that in certain parishes of the south 
ratages for tithes have greatly and unconscionably in- 
creased; and evidence is offered to prove this charge 
on oath. Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the 
fact ? Will you inquire into it ? 

"It is alleged that in certain parishes of the south 
the parishioners have duly and legally set out their tithe, 
and given due notice ; but that no persons have attended 



80 THE IRISH ORATORS 

on the part of the proctor or parson, under expectation, 
it is apprehended, of getting some new method of re- 
covery, tending to deprive the parish of the benefit of 
its ancient right, that of setting out their tithe; and evi- 
dence is offered to prove this charge on oath. 

"It is alleged that in certain parishes of the south 
tithe-farmers have oppressed and do oppress his majes- 
ty's subjects by various extortions, abuses of law, or 
breaches of the same; and evidence is offered to prove 
this charge on oath. Here, once more, I ask you, will 
you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will 
you inquire into it? 

In developing his views the orator made it clear 
that he did not intend to deprive the clergy of the 
established church of just compensation, and he 
pointed to the methods in Holland and Scotland where 
the clergy was compensated at a fixed salary. And in 
concluding he appealed to the better nature of the 
house in a passage of splendid beauty and eloquence : 

"Let bigotry and schism, the zealot's fire, the high 
priest's intolerance through all their discordancy trem- 
ble, while an enlightened parliament, with arms of gen- 
eral protection, overarches the whole community, and 
roots the Protestant ascendency in the sovereign mercy 
of its nature. Laws of operation, perhaps necessary, 
certainly severe, you have put forth already, but your 
great engine of power you have hitherto kept back ; that 
engine, which the pride of the bigot, nor the spite of 
the zealot, nor the ambition of the high priest, nor the 
arsenal of the conqueror, nor the inquisition, with its 
jaded rack and pale criminal, never thought of ; the en- 
gine which, armed with physical and moral blessings, 
comes forth and overlays mankind with services — the 
engine of redress ; this is government, and this is the 
only description of government worth your ambition. 
Were I to raise you to a great act, I should not recur 
to the history of other nations; I should recite your 



HENRY GRATTAN 81 

own acts, and set you in emulation with yourselves. Do 
you remember that night when you gave your country 
a free trade, and with your own hands opened all her 
harbors? That night when you gave her a free consti- 
tution, and broke the chains of a century, while Eng- 
land, eclipsed at your glory and your island, rose, as it 
were, from its bed and got nearer to the sun? In the 
arts that polish life, the inventions that accommodate, 
the manufactures which adorn it, you will be for many 
years inferior to some other parts of Europe; but, to 
nurse a growing people, to mature a struggling though 
hardy community, to mold, to multiply, to consolidate, 
to inspire and to exalt a young nation, be these your 
barbarous accomplishments." 

This appeal, however, failed to affect favorably the 
action of the house however much it undoubtedly im- 
pressed it, and Grattan renewed his fight on the tithe 
evils from time to time, but without avail. The fact 
that the Catholics had now been given the right to 
own property and consequently compelled to pay 
tithes to a religion they did not adhere to was used 
by Grattan as an additional argument in favor of some 
reformation in the system. He argued that this would 
divide the country on religious as well as political 
grounds, an evil he considered dangerous to the state. 
Denounced by the clergy, he retorted with fine scorn 
and sarcasm, reflecting upon the hypocrisy of gentle- 
men who appeared to wear the livery of the court of 
Heaven to enrich themselves at the expense of the 
poor. 

The year 1789 was to be a fateful one for Ireland. 
It was the year of the king's illness and the contro- 
versy regarding the regency. The contest in England 
grew out of the disposition of the Whigs to place the 



82 THE IRISH ORATORS 

prince in absolute control because of his friendly rela- 
tions with Fox and Sheridan, while Pitt, posing as the 
champion of the king, and determined upon holding 
his own authority, insisted on restrictions. The Grat- 
tan following in Ireland had strong leanings toward 
the Whigs, and it was the belief of Grattan that with 
the prince in authority much might be accomplished 
for Ireland. He had a program of reforms which 
comprehended a pension bill, a place bill, a responsi- 
bility bill, and a new police bill, and the possibility of 
the accession to unrestricted authority of the prince 
was rich in hope. Lord Clare, notwithstanding the 
fact that Grattan's party suddenly became the majority 
through the accession of the sycophants who crawl 
into the circle of authority, led a bitter fight in behalf 
of Pitt, thereby feathering his nest for the future; 
and Lord Buckingham, the lord lieutenant took his 
stand naturally with Pitt and Clare. 

In this contest Grattan carried the house with him 
and an address to the prince was voted asking him to 
assume the government of Ireland. This precipitated 
an immediate conflict with Buckingham, who refused, 
on advice of Clare, to transmit the address. This re- 
fusal was sharply rebuked by the house on motion of 
Grattan, and the lord lieutenant was censured for his 
conduct by parliament. Instead of resigning after this, 
Buckingham, in ugly mood, held on, and set to work 
to corrupt the parliament by selling peerages for 
money and using the money in buying up members of 
the house of commons. In anticipation of a possible 
discontinuance of parliament by act of the lord lieu- 
tenant, Grattan proposed a short money bill, and sup- 
plies were granted for two months only. This done, 



HENRY GRATTA1NT 83 

he introduced his reform measures and began to press 
them upon the house and with every prospect of suc- 
cess. 

Then came the announcement of the recovery of 
the king. This was a tragedy for Ireland. Pitt, who 
had been affronted by the action of the Irish par- 
liament, entered heartily into Buckingham's policy of 
corruption, and the fair weather friends of reform 
flocked back to their old Castle standard. Henceforth 
all propositions of reformation were to be easily voted 
down. So serious had the situation now become that 
the friends of the revolution of 1782 organized the 
Whig club with the object of obtaining the internal re- 
form of parliament and of preventing the consumma- 
tion of a union, which had now been openly broached. 
Before considering Grattan's persistent fight against 
the policy of the government, we shall take up the one 
reform which he was able to effect through his clever 
manipulation of the Catholic question. 



V 



This question became vital about 1790. It was 
forced upon the Irish government, partly because of 
the revolutionary uprising in France which had fright- 
ened the minister, and partly because of the conces- 
sions made to the Catholics of England. About this 
time, following a brutal rebuff from Westmoreland, 
then lord lieutenant, the Catholics sent a deputation 
to England, with John Keogh at it head, to present to 
the government a list of the penal laws and ask for 
their repeal. This deputation was able to carry back 
to Ireland the assurance that there would be no objec- 



84 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tion if the Irish parliament opened the profession of 
law to Catholics, and conferred eligibility for the 
offices of sheriff, county magistrates and grand jurors. 
With this assurance the Catholics applied to Grat- 
tan. Broad enough to subordinate any desire for 
personal glory to the success of the Catholic cause he 
strongly advised that his championship of the pro- 
posed measure would make it a party question and 
would prejudice the government, which was in the 
majority. After a stormy series of discussions, in 
which Grattan participated on the side of Catholic 
concession, the High Church party, with Lord Clare 
at their head, were shocked to hear in the message 
from the throne in January, 1793, the suggestion that 
the Catholic question be taken up and considered with 
the view to such legislation as would be satisfactory to 
Catholic subjects. A little later the government 
brought in a bill which gave the Catholics a vote at 
elections, enabled them to sit as grand jurors, author- 
ized the endowment of schools and colleges, permitted 
them to carry arms when possessed of a certain amount 
of property, empowered them to hold civil offices un- 
der certain restrictions, and disallowed challenges 
against them on petit juries. This bill, while furiously 
fought by the notorious Doctor Duigenan, made prog- 
ress, and in February, the final debate began. It was 
assailed by the bigots because it smacked slightly of 
toleration, and by Grattan and Curran on the ground 
that it should not stop short of making the Catholic 
subject eligible to a seat in parliament. Grattan' s 
speech on this occasion was a magnificent argument 
for toleration and he is described by eye witnesses as 
having spoken with "a divine enthusiasm." 



HENRY GRATTAN 85 

"Conquerors, or tyrants proceeding from conquer- 
ors," he said, "have scarcely ever for any length of 
time governed by those partial disabilities; but a peo- 
ple, so to govern itself, or rather, under the name of 
government, so to exclude itself, the industrious, the 
opulent, the useful; that part that feeds you with its 
industry, and supplies you with its taxes, weaves that 
you may wear, and plows that you may eat: to exclude 
a body so useful, so numerous, and that forever; and, 
in the meantime to tax them ad libitum, and occasion- 
ally to pledge their lives and fortunes — for what? For 
their disfranchisement. It can not be done; continue 
it, and you expect from your laws what it were blas- 
phemy to ask from your Maker. Such a policy always 
turns on the inventor, and bruises him under the stroke 
of the scepter or the sword, or sinks him under accumu- 
lation of debt and loss of dominion. Need I go to in- 
stances? What was the case of Ireland, enslaved for 
a century, and withered and blasted by her Protestant 
ascendency, like a shattered^ oak scathed on its hill by 
the fires of its own intolerance? What lost England 
America but such a policy? An attempt to bind men 
by a parliament in which they are not represented ; such 
an attempt as some would now continue to practise on 
the Catholics, and involve England. What was it saved 
Ireland to England but the contrary policy? I have 
seen these principles of liberty verified by yourselves. 
I have heard addresses from counties and cities here 
on the subject of the slave trade to Mr. Wilberf orce, 
thanking him for his efforts to set free a distressed peo- 
ple; has your pity traversed leagues of sea to sit down 
by the black boy on the coast of Guinea ; and have you 
forgot the man at home, by your side, your brother? 
Come, then, and by one great act cancel this code, and 
prepare your mind for that bright order of time which 
now seems to touch your condition." r 

The bill, with some alterations, passed and became 
a law, thereby placing the Catholic, in theory, on a 



86 FHE IRISH ORATORS 

level with the Protestant in many respects. While the 
measure was fathered by the government, the power 
that loomed behind, cleverly pulling on the ropes, was 
Henry Grattan, and this was thoroughly understood 
both by the Catholics and by the liberals of England. 
Edmund Burke wrote him that the passage of the law 
was "the greatest effort of his genius" and that his 
great abilities were "never more distinguished or in a 
better cause." 

It was the hope of Grattan at the time of the passage 
of this measure that fttrther concessions would be 
speedily made, but within a year he was sadly disillu- 
sioned by the Fitzwilliam incident — an incident which 
contributed not a little to the spread of the revolu- 
tionary movement. 

Lord Fitzwilliam was a nobleman by nature, broad, 
tolerant and in hearty sympathy with the Catholics 
in their contention for equal rights. . When in 1794 
he was sent to Ireland as lord lieutenant it was with 
the distinct agreement that concessions were to follow. 
This was understood by Pitt in England and by Grat- 
tan and the Catholics in Ireland. So thoroughly was 
this understood that efforts were made to have Grattan 
accept office as chancellor of the exchequer. The whole 
arrangement was gone over at a dinner in London at- 
tended by Pitt, Grattan, Fitzwilliam and others. 
While Pitt's attitude at the dinner implanted in Grat- 
tan a feeling of distrust, he still believed that the Eng- 
lish minister was acting in good faith. When Fitz- 
william reached Dublin he was received with great 
enthusiasm and hailed as a deliverer. This was on 
January fourth, 1794. In reply to the addresses that 
poured in upon him from all parts of the country he 



HENRY GRATTAN 87 

frankly avowed that Catholic restrictions would be 
speedily removed. Pitt, it should be understood, was 
informed of the nature of these addresses and the re- 
plies. In his address from the throne Lord Fitz- 
william reiterated his pledge. In anticipation of the 
fulfilment of the government's pledge, Grattan, early 
in February, moved that two hundred thousand pounds 
be granted for the purpose of raising men for his 
majesty's fleet, and the motion was agreed to without 
a division. Nine days later Grattan obtained leave to 
bring in a bill for the relief of the Catholics and with 
the opposition of but three members. It looked as 
though a new era had dawned for Ireland. 

Then startling rumors began to float about Dublin 
to the effect that Lord Fitzwilliam was to be recalled. 
The very idea seemed preposterous. The pledge was 
unmistakable. The government had been generously 
voted two hundred thousand pounds in a spirit of grat- 
itude. To assume that Pitt could stoop to an act so 
contemptible seemed impossible. However, the house 
took the precaution of passing resolutions thanking 
Fitzwilliam for this conduct, and the entire house 
marched to the Castle to present them. In less than 
three months after reaching Dublin, Fitzwilliam was 
recalled ! 

A miserable pretext for the dismissal was found in 
the turning out of office of two wretched incompetents 
who had been runners for the execrable Clare and 
slaves of the Castle. In the English house of lords 
Fitzwilliam declared that he had been dismissed be- 
cause of his affiliation with Grattan and his party. The 
former lord lieutenant, in his speech on that ooeasion, 
disclosed to the English parliament the precise arrange- 



88 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ments under which he had taken office, and Pitt, unable 
to enter a denial, took recourse in a cowardly silence. 
In the Irish house, Grattan sought an early opportunity 
to verify the story of Fitzwilliam, this being done in 
April, and through the presentation of a motion for a 
committee on the state of the nation which declared 
"that Catholic emancipation was not only the conces- 
sion of the British cabinet, but its precise arrange- 
ment." The speech of Grattan in support of his mo- 
tion was delivered with much heat to an excited 
audience, and the galleries broke into the wildest ap- 
plause in response to the orator's denunciation of the 
perfidy of Pitt; and when in conclusion he defiantly 
declared, "I am here to confront my enemies and stand 
by my country," the tumult in the galleries was such 
that the speaker was forced to clear the house of all 
but members to restore the slightest semblance of 
order. This infamous trick of Pitt's had a remarkable 
effect upon the people. Dublin went into mourning 
when Fitzwilliam left. The revolutionary element 
was recruited from the ranks of the disgusted. And 
Henry Grattan was forced to the reluctant realization 
that his fight now would have to be for nothing less 
than the preservation of the parliament to which he 
had given its independence. 

VI - I 

The fight for the preservation of parliamentary in- 
dependence was forced by the corrupt methods of 
Buckingham and the open avowal of his successor, 
Lord Westmoreland, that he proposed to govern after 
the fashion of his predecessor. From the moment of 



HENRY GRATTAN 89 

that avowal Grattan enlisted for the war, and during 
the next seven years we find him exposing the corrup- 
tion of the government and the tendency of its policy 
at every opportunity. It can not be said that. Ireland 
drifted into the union without warning. Every step 
in that direction was heralded by the lips of the father 
of parliamentary independence. We shall find, how- 
ever, that the public opinion of Ireland was not to be 
considered in the transaction to which Pitt was looking 
forward, and that all arrangements were to be made 
between the minister and the members he should buy. 
As early as January, 1790, we find Grattan sounding 
the note of warning in a speech following that of the 
lord lieutenant, who had announced in the address 
from the throne that the policies of Buckingham 
would be adopted by his administration. In explain- 
ing his inability to assent to that portion of the address, 
Grattan gave the house a bill of particulars relative to 
the happenings of the Buckingham regime. 

"This was the man. You remember his entry into 
the capital; trampling on the hearse of the Duke of 
Rutland, and seated in a triumphal car, drawn by pub- 
lic credulity; on one side fallacious hope, and on the 
other many-mouthed profession; a figure with two 
faces, one turned to the treasury, and the other pre- 
sented to the people; and with a double tongue speak- 
ing contradictory languages. 

"The minister alights ; justice looked up to him with 
empty hopes, and peculation faints with idle alarms: 
he finds the city a prey to an unconstitutional police — 
he continues it ; he finds the country overburdened with 
a shameful pension list — he increases it; he finds the 
house of commons swarming with placemen — he mul- 
tiplies them; he finds the salary of the secretary in- 
creased to prevent a pension — he grants a pension; he 



90 THE IRISH ORATORS 

finds the kingdom drained by absentee employments and 
by compensations to buy them home — he gives the best 
reversion in the country to an absentee, his brother. 
He finds the government, at different times, had dis- 
graced itself by creating sinecures to gratify corrupt 
affection — he makes two commissioners of the rolls and 
gives one of them to another brother; he finds the sec- 
ond council to the commissioners put down because use- 
less — he revives it; he finds the boards of accounts and 
stamps annexed by public compact — he divides them; 
he finds three resolutions declaring that seven commis- 
sioners are sufficient — he makes nine ; he finds the coun- 
try has suffered by some peculations in the ordnance — 
he increases the salary of officers, and gives the places 
to members — members of parliament." 

Immediately after the Westmoreland administration 
went in, a significant rearrangement of the galleries 
of the house of commons was made, reducing the space 
for spectators by half. To do this it was necessary to 
destroy the symmetry of the interior, and for this no 
explanation was forthcoming. The matter however 
was called to the attention of the house by Grattan, 
who grasped the ominous significance of the proceed- 
ing, calculated to minimize the embarrassment of mer- 
cenaries gazed down upon by honest men. The very 
month of Westmoreland's arrival we find Grattan 
forcing the fighting by offering resolutions against 
increasing the number of the commissioners of the 
revenue and dividing the board and providing that 
these resolutions be laid before the king with the re- 
quest that he communicate the names of the persons 
who recommended the increase and the division. His 
speech in offering the resolutions was a frank reflec- 
tion upon the honesty of government. His first sen- 
tence was a thunderbolt. 



HENRY GRATTAN 91 

"We combat a project to govern this country by cor- 
ruption," he began. "It is not like the supremacy of 
the British parliament — a thunderbolt; nor like the 
twenty propositions, a mine of artifice; but without the 
force of the one or the fraud of the other, will answer 
all the purposes of both." 

And again : 

"They began with a contempt of popularity, they pro- 
ceeded to a contempt of fame, and they now vibrate on 
the last string, a contempt of virtue." 

And again : 

"I will not say that ministers went into the open 
streets with cockades in their hats and drums in their 
hands ; but I do say they were as public, and had as 
openly broken terms with decorum, as if they had so 
paraded in college-green, with their business lettered 
on their foreheads." 

And further on he says : 

"I have shown this measure to be a disregard to the 
sense of this house, for the purpose of extending in- 
fluence; this leads me from the particular subject to the 
general policy. The nature of this policy I have de- 
scribed; the ultimate consequences I shall not now de- 
tail, but I will mention one which seems to include all. 
I know you say — union; no, it is not the extinction of 
the Irish parliament, but its disgraceful continuation. 
Parliament under such a project will live, but live to 
no one useful purpose. The minister will defeat her at- 
tempts by corruption, and deter the repetition of her 
attempts by threatening the repetition of the expenses 
of corruption. Having been long the bawd, corruption 
will become the sage and honest admonitress of the na- 



92 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tion. She will advise her no more to provoke the min- 
ister to rob the subject; she will advise her to serve in 
order to save; to be a slave on the principle of good 
housewifery; then will parliament, instead of control- 
ling the court, administer to its licentiousness ; provide 
villas and furniture for the servants of the Castle, afford 
a place army to obnoxious members, accommodate with 
cruel and contradictory clauses the commissioners of the 
revenue, or feed on public rapine the viceroy's clanship. 
Parliament, that giant that purged these islands of a 
race of tyrants whose breed it was the misfortune of 
England to preserve and of Ireland to adopt; parlia- 
ment, whose head has for ages commerced with the wis- 
dom of the gods and whose foot has spoken thunder 
and deposition to the oppressor, will, like the sacred 
giant, stand a public spectacle shorn of its strength, or 
rather, like that giant, he will retain his strength for 
the amusement of his enemies, and do feats of ignomin- 
ious power to gratify an idle and hostile court ; and these 
walls, where once the public weal contended, and the 
patriot strove, will resemble the ruin of some Italian 
temple, and abound, not with senators, but with animals 
of prey in the guise of senators, chattering their pert 
debates, and disgracing those seats which once belonged 
to the people." 

It was inevitable that charges so serious should give 
grave umbrage to the government and its hired men, 
and during the course of the discussion, it was sug- 
gested, by way of intimidation, that either Grattan had 
made false charges or the minister was corrupt, and 
that one or the other should be punished. This in- 
stantly brought Grattan to his feet with a hearty 
assent. 

"Bring against us your proofs of our sedition," he 
exclaimed, "and I will bring against you my proofs of 
your corruption; proofs of attempts to intimidate mem- 



HENRY GRATTAN 93 

bers in the discharge of their duties ; proof of your tam- 
pering with members, and proofs of your sale of hon- 
ors." 

The attempt of some of the Castle hirelings to jus- 
tify the course of the government called forth one of 
the most furious retorts to be found in any of Grattan's 
speeches : 

"Sir, that corruption should be practised by ministers 
is a common case; that it should be carried under the 
present administration to that most extraordinary and 
alarming excess is the peculiar misfortune of the coun- 
try, and the peculiar disgrace of her government, in their 
present venal hands. But that this should be justified — 
that it should be justified in parliament — corruption ex- 
pressly justified in parliament. Sir, the woman who 
keeps her secret is received, but she who boasts her 
shame is the outcast of society; in these cases the ear 
corrupts the mind, and the sound haunts the soul with 
the warm image of pollution. That corruption should 
be the conversation of your cabinet, the topic of your 
closet, the soul and spirit of your table talk, I can well 
conceive ; but to introduce here your abominable rites, to 
bring Mammon out of your closet and fall down and 
worship him in the high court of parliament — Sir, how 
far must the ministry have gone when even here it bursts 
out its horrid suggestion 1" 

The utter shamelessness of the government, which 
had the hearty sympathy of Pitt, was manifested on 
this occasion by the defeat of the resolutions and the 
refusal of the government to proceed against Grattan 
because of the open charges he had made. 

Undaunted by this defeat, and determined that the 
people should thoroughly understand the situation, 
Grattan returned to the attack in less than three weeks 



94 THE IRISH ORATORS 

with a motion for the appointment of a select commit- 
tee to inquire into the sale of peerages and the use of 
the money thus attained in the purchase of government 
seats in the commons. In his speech, in support of 
the motion, he again threw a bomb into the Castle camp 
with his first sentence — an impressive reiteration : 

"Sir, we continue to combat the project to govern this 
country by corruption." 

In concluding his remarks Grattan made his charges 
so specific that no government, unless wholly and 
hopelessly depraved — and it was the government of 
William Pitt — would have failed to accept the chal- 
lenge and have agreed to the inquiry : 

"We charge them publicly, and in the face of their 
country, with making corrupt agreements for the sale of 
peerages ; for doing which we say they are impeachable. 
We charge them with corrupt agreements for the disposal 
of the money arising from the sale, to purchase for the 
servants of the Castle seats in the assembly of the peo- 
ple ; for doing which we say they are impeachable. We 
charge them with committing these offenses not in one, 
nor in two, but in many instances ; for which complica- 
tion of offenses we say they are impeachable; guilty of 
a systematic endeavor to undermine the constitution in 
violation of the laws of the land. We pledge ourselves 
to convict them; we dare them to go into an inquiry; 
we do not affect to treat them other than as public male- 
factors ; we speak to them in a style of the most morti- 
fying and humiliating defiance. We pronounce them to 
be public criminals. Will they dare to deny the charge ? 
I call upon, and dare the ostensible member to rise in 
his place and say on his honor that he does not believe 
such corrupt agreements have taken place. I wait for a 
specific answer." 

The only specific answer made by government to 



HENRY GRATTAN 95 

these specific charges was the defeat of the motion for 
an inquiry by a vote of one hundred and forty- four to 
eighty-eight. Four days later, in speaking on another 
subject, and referring to the flagrant corruption of the 
government, Grattan quoted a member as having said 
that in the former speech he should have been stopped ; 
and then deliberately he reiterated the charges as given 
in the extract just quoted, and concluded : 

"I repeat these charges now; and if anything more 
severe was on the former occasion expressed, I beg to 
be reminded of it, and I will again repeat it. Why do 
not you expel me now? Why not send me to the bar 
of the lords ? Where is your adviser ? Going out of this 
house I shall repeat my sentiments, that his majesty's 
ministers are guilty of impeachable offenses ; and, ad- 
vancing to the bar of the lords, I shall repeat those senti- 
ments; or, if the Tower is to be my habitation, I will 
there meditate the impeachment of these ministers, and 
return, not to capitulate, but to punish." 

Little wonder that the Frouds and Fishers, the his- 
torical defenders of the crime of the union, have not 
the hardihood to deny that the act was committed 
through the most disgraceful governmental corruption, 
with records such as have been handed down in the 
speeches of Grattan to confront and convict them. On 
every possible opportunity Grattan returned to the 
charge in an effort to discover some slight sensibility 
in the ministers that might impel them to challenge 
proof — but they preferred the charges to the proof. 
In 1793 we find him making three separate efforts to 
secure parliamentary reform, and in every instance re- 
iterating his direct charges against the honesty of the 
ministry. 



96 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"I say the reform of parliament is made irresistible 
by the minister's offenses," he said. "Have we forgotten 
how the present ministry came into power? They were 
made the ministers of the present lord lieutenant because 
they had been the panders of the predecessors. Have 
we forgotten how they went about administering to every 
venal person the wages of corruption ? Have we forgot- 
ten how, in one stroke, they created fifteen new parlia- 
mentary provisions, declared in this house by their friends 
to have been made for no other purpose than that of 
buying the members ? And do such men talk of the dig- 
nity of parliament? Have we forgotten that other act 
of theirs — that misdemeanor for which they are impeach- 
able, and of which they are so notoriously guilty — that 
charged, arraigned, put down publicly and repeatedly, 
they have not dared to deny it ? I mean the sale of peer- 
ages for sums of money conditioned to be expended for 
the procuring of seats in this house for persons named 
by the minister ; and do these men talk of character ?" 

The failure of the attempt at parliamentary reform 
sealed the fate of the parliament. In 1793, when 
Grattan made his fight for reform, there were three 
hundred members, of whom two hundred were selected 
by one hundred individuals, and at least fifty were 
chosen by ten individuals. When, in addition to this 
tragic condition, the infamous policy of the ministry 
in selling peerages to buy seats for governmental pur- 
poses is taken into consideration, it is not at all surpris- 
ing that the ultimate result was union. 

Meanwhile the country was torn with the most bitter 
religious dissensions, the outrages of the Orangemen 
augmenting the growing army of the United Irishmen, 
the militant remnant of the Volunteers who had de- 
spaired of the liberty of Ireland under British rule, 



HENRY GRATTAN 97 

secretly preparing to revolt. When parliament met in 
1796 a subservient house was quite ready to support 
the government in the most violent measures of re- 
pression it might see fit to put forth. An insurrection 
bill was passed which imprisoned the peasantry in their 
houses from sunset to sunrise. This was supplemented 
by an indemnity bill which absolved magistrates from 
all their illegal acts. This made the magistrates abso- 
lute dictators and deprived the citizen of the least sem- 
blance of liberty or legal rights. These measures, born 
of the brain of the brutal Clare, were described by Cur- 
ran as a "bloody code." During the course of the year 
Grattan spoke in favor of strengthening the country 
and securing unanimity by granting to all subjects the 
blessings of the constitution regardless of religion, but 
he was overwhelmingly voted down; and four days 
later the writ of habeas corpus was suspended. In pro- 
testing against this act of despotism Grattan said : 

"As to your political liberty, the influence of the crown 
seems to have corrected that blessing; as to your civil 
liberty, this bill, added to the bills you passed last ses- 
sion, seems to correct that blessing also. By the influence 
of the crown the minister becomes the master of your 
legislation, and, by those bills, he becomes master of your 
persons. Now, after this, where are the blessings of your 
constitution? You have deprived the subject of political 
liberty, and you now deprive him of civil liberty, lest he 
should exercise that liberty to reform abuses; lest he 
should use that liberty he has left to recover the liberty 
he has lost. I protest against the system; it is abomi- 
nable; you feel it to be so, and take these measures of 
power because you know the people can not be reconciled 
to it but by power; because you feel you have lost the 
confidence of the great body of the people." 



98 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



This speech was considered seditious by the govern- 
ment and has greatly shocked some of the fastidious 
English historians who have found nothing but the 
admirable in the perfidy of Pitt, the savagery of Clare, 
or the corruption of Castlereagh. The conditions be- 
came worse and worse. There was no longer any legal 
right that government felt bound to respect. Liberty 
had been destroyed and a despotism established. The 
prisons were full to overflowing. Soldiers were being 
poured into the island. Not content with all that had 
been done, General Lake, commanding the northern 
district of Ireland, assuming the airs of a dictator, 
issued an amazing proclamation calling upon the peo- 
ple to surrender all arms in their possession to the 
English soldiers. Against this outrage Grattan pro- 
tested with all the vehemence of his nature. 



"I ask you now, will you submit to such an act ?" he 
demanded. "Will you sit by with folded arms and suf- 
fer the deputy of an English minister to disarm the Irish? 
Will you suffer him to enslave your country? Will you 
suffer him to disgrace her? Will you surrender to him 
her character, her constitution, her arms, and, in that 
word, everything dear to Irishmen ?" 

But the eloquence of a Grattan could accomplish 
nothing as against the gold of the ministry, and thus 
the infamies practised by the government continued to 
recruit the army of the United Irishmen. 

It should be said that Grattan had no sympathy 
with the purposes of this organization, and that he and 
his friends, although approached with the proposition 
that they cast their lot with the revolutionary organ- 
ization, refused to countenance it in any way. At the 



HENRY GRATTAN 99 

same time he, better perhaps than most, realized that 
the policy of the minister was making the revolu- 
tionary sentiment more formidable than it had ever 
before been in a generation. At this juncture Grattan 
found himself in a quandary. He could not refrain 
from lifting up his voice in the exposure of Irish 
wrongs and in the demand for the righting of these 
wrongs. And yet he knew that his powerful philippics 
against the government could not but have their effect 
upon the masses of the people, thereby driving the 
more impulsive into the revolutionary ranks. He drew 
back in horror from the contemplation of the bloody 
uprising that he foresaw. And yet to join in measures 
for the suppression of rebellion would be tantamount 
to locking arms with the ministers he despised as ene- 
mies to the constitution of his country. The preceding 
seven years had made it all too plain that he could 
accomplish nothing more, at least at the time, by con- 
tinuing his fight. His following had sunk to an insig- 
nificant number. This situation led to the determina- 
tion of himself and friends to secede from parliament. 
The announcement was reserved for the conclusion of 
a final fight in favor of parliamentary reform. 

Thus on May fifteenth, 1797, Henry Grattan passed 
from the parliament to which he had given its inde- 
pendence, only to return, a sadly broken man, to wit- 
ness its utter destruction. It has sometimes been said 
that he failed to exert himself as he should to stem the 
tide of corruption which was to overwhelm his coun- 
try. The record of his seven years' fight and the 
citations from his speeches surely exonerate him from 
the charge of apathy or indifference, and establish 



100 THE IRISH ORATORS 

beyond all doubt that he did all within the power of 
mortal to save his country. 

VII 

Worn by worry and disease, Grattan, upon his se- 
cession from parliament, resigned from the yeomanry 
corps, and went to Castle Connel, a watering place in 
the county of Limerick, on the borders of the Shan- 
non. After a brief sojourn there he retired to his 
country place, Tinnehinch, in the hope that his jaded 
nerves might recover in the tranquil surroundings. 
Alas, all tranquillity had departed from Ireland. The 
country was now in the throes of rebellion and no man 
was safe from the spies and informers of the Castle, 
least of all the great orator whom they had been un- 
able either to bribe or buy. Grattan appears to have 
appreciated the delicacy of his position and to have 
been on the lookout for traps that might be set for him. 
One of the wretched informers of the period actually 
called upon him at Tinnehinch in an effort to trap him 
into joining the United Irishmen. During his absence 
in England the ruffians that swarmed over the country 
terrorized Mrs. Grattan, who remained alone with the 
servants at Tinnehinch. She was threatened with vio- 
lence, attempts were made to trap her into saying 
something that might be used against her husband, and 
in the night the steps of prowlers were often heard 
around the house. On the return of Grattan the spies, 
informers and gunmen of authority were again set 
upon him, and during these trying times he took the 
precaution to have arms in reach at all hours for 'the 
protection of his life. 



HENRY GRATTAN 101 

Beset with every danger, his life threatened, his 
reputation assailed, his country despoiled of her liber- 
ties, and his parliament doomed already to destruction, 
the health of Grattan broke down completely. His 
condition became such that he was forbidden to talk 
politics, to read or write, and owing to his nervous 
malady every effort was made to keep the developments 
in Dublin from him. He went to England and the 
Isle of Wight, but without improvement. 

Thus near the close of 1799 he returned to Tinne- 
hinch, a feeble, prematurely old man. Hardly had he 
reached his home when deputations of his friends be- 
gan to pour in upon him with importunities that he re- 
enter parliament and do all he could to prevent the 
consummation of the union which was then under dis- 
cussion in Dublin. Anxious though he was to defend 
the life of his parliament, he was impelled by the des- 
perate state of his health to give a refusal. A little 
later, however, a vacancy was created by death in the 
representation of Wicklow, and the importunities of 
his friends being renewed, and Mrs. Grattan joining in 
the effort to persuade him as an imperative duty to his 
country, he gave a reluctant consent. He was taken to 
Dublin as an invalid, and unable to bear even the noise 
of a hotel, a place was found for him in a private 
house, where he retired to await the election. His 
friends were especially anxious for him to be present 
at the opening of parliament when a stormy and bitter 
debate on the project of the union was expected, and 
special permission was given for holding the election 
after midnight on the day of the opening. 

That night the debate began in all its fury, the bril- 
liant Plunkett leading the national party — and Grattan 



102 THE IRISH ORATORS 

was not there. The moment however that the return 
on the election was signed, a man was despatched on 
horseback for Dublin. It was five o'clock in the morn- 
ing when he knocked loudly on the door of Grattan's 
lodging. The orator had been ill all night. "Oh, they 
have come," he exclaimed, "why will they not let me 
die in peace ?" Mrs. Grattan insisted that he go im- 
mediately to the house of commons. His attendants 
dressed him as they would have dressed a child, and 
helped him down the stairs. He went to the parlor 
and loaded his pistols, as he had reasons to fear as- 
sassination. They wrapped a blanket about him, put 
him in a sedan chair, and Mrs. Grattan watched his 
departure with the feeling that she might never see 
him again. She was reassured somewhat by the news 
that Grattan's friends had agreed to w come forward 
in the event of a quarrel and take his place. "My 
husband can not die better than in defense of his 
country," she replied proudly. 

It was now seven o'clock and the debate had been 
in progress all night, Plunkett had delivered his mar- 
velous speech of protest, and Eagan had risen to 
speak, when suddenly, the doors flew open, and there 
on the threshold stood Grattan, thin, weak, emaciated, 
supported by two friends. As he started slowly down 
the aisle to be sworn, the entire house, including Cas- 
tlereagh, rose instinctively as a. token of respect. A 
dramatic figure he made, dressed in the Volunteer uni- 
form, blue with red cuffs and collars, and with a 
cocked hat on his head. As his friends gathered about 
him, one of them, noticing his hat upon his head, re- 
minded him of the rules. "Do not mind me, I know 
what to do," he replied petulantly. He looked about 



HENRY GRATTAN 103 

defiantly as he proceeded down the aisle and did not 
remove his hat until he had almost reached the table. 
After taking the oath, he sat down beside Plunkett, 
and Eagan resumed his interrupted speech. 

The physical condition of Grattan at this time and 
for months before has been given in some detail for 
the purpose of emphasizing the utter unreliability of 
the pro-British writers of history in dealing with 
Irish subjects. Within the last three years Mr. J. R. 
Fisher has written a volume on The End of the Irish 
Parliament, to which reference has already been made 
in the study of Flood, in which every patriot is de- 
rided and such characters as Castlereagh and Lord 
Clare and Pitt are whitewashed after the approved 
Tory fashion. Mr. Fisher must have known some- 
thing of the physical condition of Grattan on the 
dreary morning that he returned to parliament, and 
he could easily have satisfied himself by turning to the 
correspondence of Mrs. Grattan and ascertaining. And 
yet treating of the dramatic entrance of Grattan, he 
ascribes his feeble manner to an affected imitation of 
Chatham. 

At length Eagan concluded, and Grattan, obtaining 
permission to speak while seated, began his reply to 
Pitt: 

"The gentleman who spoke last but one has spoken the 
pamphlet of the English minister — I answer that min- 
ister. He has published two celebrated productions, in 
both of which he proclaims his intolerance of the constitu- 
tion of Ireland. He concurs with the men whom he has 
hanged in thinking the constitution a grievance, and dif- 
fers from them in the remedy only ; they proposing to 
substitute a republic and he proposing to substitute the 



104 THE IRISH ORATORS 

yoke of the BritisH parliament; the one turns rebel to 
the king, the minister a rebel to the constitution." 

Proceeding then in an argumentative manner, in 
contrast to the impassioned style employed a little be- 
fore by Plunkett, he took up one by one the arguments 
of the minister, insisting that the settlement of 1782 
was considered final by both countries, defending the 
position of the Irish parliament in the regency contro- 
versy as justifiable and proper, and answering the ob- 
jection that a separate parliament would cripple the 
empire in the event of war, by declaring the policy pro- 
posed by the minister more conducive to disloyalty. 

"I will put this question to my country," he said. "I 
will suppose her at the bar, and I will ask her, will you 
fight for a union as you would for a constitution ? Will 
you fight for that lords, and that commons, who in the 
last century took away your trade, and in the present, 
your constitution, as for that king, lords and commons 
who have restored them? Well, the minister has de- 
stroyed this constitution ; to destroy is easy ; the edifices 
of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to 
build but ask only minutes to precipitate ; and, as the fall 
of both is the effort of no time, so neither is it a business 
of any strength; a pick-ax and a common laborer will 
do the one — a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked min- 
ister, the other." 

He then took up the objections to the union, show- 
ing that it was not union, no identification of peoples, 
because of the exclusion of the Catholics, that it 
merely meant "an extinction of the constitution and 
an exclusion of the people." He followed this by argu- 
ing the insincerity of the British promises regarding 
Catholic emancipation, the abolition of tithes, and lib 



HENRY GRATTAN 105 

erality toward Irish commerce — all of which he dubbed 
as bribes — by showing the antagonism of the govern- 
ment to these very measures during the preceding 
decade. 

"Against such a proposition," he exclaimed in conclu- 
sion, "were I expiring on the floor, I would beg to utter 
my last breath, and record my dying testimony." 

A few days later the message of the lord lieutenant, 
Cornwallis, recommending a union, was read and an- 
other acrimonious debate resulted, lasting all night 
and until noon the next day. On this occasion Grattan 
again assailed the proposition with a great argument, 
free from invective, but invincible in its reasoning. 

"The question is not such as occupied you of old," he 
said in conclusion. "Old Poyning's law, not peculation, 
not plunder, not an embargo, not a Catholic bill, not a 
reform bill — it is your being — it is more — it is your life 
to come, whether you will go with the Castle at your head 
to the tomb of Charlemont and the Volunteers, and erase 
his epitaph; or whether your children shall go to your 
graves, saying a venal, a military court, attacked the lib- 
erties of the Irish, and here lie the bones of the honorable 
dead men who saved their country. Such an epitaph is 
a nobility which the king can not give his slaves ; it is a 
glory which the crown can not give the king." 

In a little less than two weeks after this debate the 
articles of union were presented, and Isaac Corry was 
selected by the government to defend them. This man 
had commenced his public career as a patriot and had 
frequently been a guest of Grattan at Tinnehinch; 
had written complimentary verse to his idol ; and then 
had turned traitor under the influence of the Castle. 
In the course of his speech he went out of his way to 



106 THE IRISH ORATORS 

attack his former leader with great bitterness, and 
there is every reason to believe that he was instructed 
to do so by the Castle party. Grattan entered the 
house while Corry was in the midst of a vehement de- 
nunciation, and as he took his seat, he turned to his 
neighbor with the remark, "I see they wish to make 
an attack upon my life, and the sooner the better." 
The moment Corry resumed his seat Grattan was up 
and at him like a lion. 



"Has the gentleman done?" he exclaimed. "Has he 
completely done ? He was unparliamentary from the be- 
ginning to the end of his speech. There was scarce a 
word he uttered that was not a violation of the priv- 
ileges of the house ; but I did not call him to order — why? 
Because the limited talents of some men render it im- 
possible for them to be severe without being unparlia- 
mentary. But before I sit down I shall show him how to 
be severe and parliamentary at the same time. On any 
other occasion I should consider myself justifiable in 
treating with silent contempt anything which might fall 
from that honorable member; but there are times when 
the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude 
of the accusation." 






Then followed one of the most terrific arraignments 
ever heard by any parliamentary body, more crushing 
than the philippic against Flood — so overwhelming 
that it fairly thrilled an unwilling house which sat as 
though stupefied while the great orator lashed not 
only the insignificant Corry, but the flagrant corruption 
of the government. Even Castlereagh sat like one 
electrified, lost in admiring wonder. The moment he 
concluded Grattan left the house, and in passing Plun- 
kett, who was watching him anxiously because of his 






HENRY GRATTAN 107 



i physical condition, gave him a reassuring clasp of the 
hand which led Plunkett to remark that the affair had 
done more for Grattan's health than all the medicine 

I he had taken. A duel resulted and Corry was shot in 
the arm. Ten years later, while Grattan was at 
Brighton, Corry called at the home of the man who 

i had given him such an unmerciful drubbing, and, al- 
though the Grattan family wished to turn him away, 
Grattan himself, who had seen him approaching, went 
to the door and took his hand. 

A few days after the Corry incident the articles of 
union were called up for second reading. The fight 
to prevent the destruction of the parliament was now 
manifestly hopeless, although Grattan returned to the 
attack with his accustomed brilliance. Never was he 
more touching or more impressive than when he spoke 
his last word for the parliament which was his child : 

"The constitution may be for a time so lost ; the char- 
acter of the country can not be so lost. The ministers 
of the crown will, or may, perhaps, find that it is not so 
easy to put down forever an ancient and respectable na- 
tion by abilities, however great, and by power and by cor- 
ruption, however irresistible; liberty may repair her 
golden beams, and with redoubled heart animate the 
(country; the cry of loyalty will not long continue against 
the principles of liberty; loyalty is a noble, a judicious 
and a capacious principle, but in these countries loyalty, 
distinct from liberty, is corruption. 

"The cry of the connection will not in the end avail 
against the principles of liberty. Connection is a wise 
and profound policy; but connection without an Irish 
parliament is connection without its own principle, with- 
out analogy of condition, without the pride of honor that 
should attend it ; is innovation, is peril, is subjugation-^ 
not connection. 



108 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"The cry of disaffection will not in the end avail against 
the principle of liberty. 

"Yet I do not give up my country — I see her in a 
swoon, but she is not dead — though in her tomb she lies 
helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit 
of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty — 

"Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet 
Is crimson on thy lips, and in thy cheeks, 
And death's pale flag is not advanced there. 

"While a plank of the vessel sticks together I will not 
leave her; let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and 
carry the light bark of his faith with every new breath 
of wind — I will remain anchored here with fidelity to 
the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, 
faithful to her fall." 

After the consummation of the union, Grattan, a 
melancholy wreck of his former self, retired to Tinne- 
hinch where he devoted himself to the education of his 
children. His solitude was cheered by his love of 
music and literature. Often in the mornings he would 
walk, a mile distant, to an old Catholic churchyard, 
beautifully situated on an eminence overlooking the 
Waterfall River. There beside the ivy-grown and 
crumbling walls, beneath the shade of mighty trees, 
he would sit for hours, listening to the murmur of the 
water. His children, who often accompanied him, 
sometimes saw him start into fits of frenzy, or sit with 
bowed head and in tears. In time, however, his grief 
was moderated, and his health improved. Summer 
and winter he was wont to go, on rising, directly to 
the river to take a plunge, and thus, all unconsciously, 
he was gathering strength for the battles for his coun- 
try that still awaited him. 






HENRY GRATTAN 109 

■ 

VIII 

The moment the Irish parliament was destroyed 
Charles James Fox, an ardent admirer of Grattan, 
urged him to enter the house of commons in London, 
and form the nucleus of an Irish party which should 
work in conjunction with the Whigs for Catholic 
emancipation. It had been one of the ambitions 
of Grattan's life to contribute to the liberation of 
the larger portion of his fellow countrymen and 
the importunities of Fox impelled him to enter the 
imperial parliament in the hope of accomplishing 
something in that direction. From the time of his 
entrance in 1804 until his death in 1815 he threw 
himself heart and soul into the fight for eman- 
cipation and in the interval led with brilliancy and 
eloquence many a forlorn hope. The genius which 
had so impressed the Irish people instantly made a 
profound impression on the statesmen of Saint Ste- 
phens and he was accorded first rank among the great 
orators whose voices were then heard within that an- 
cient chamber. The part so impressively played by 
him during these years will be adequately covered in 
the study of O'Connell, who led the fight in Ireland. 
Suffice it to say now that in the very last year of his 
life he was found fighting with undiminished fire. 
Old, and broken with toil and trouble, he led the fight 
for the Relief bill of 1819, which was defeated in the 
commons by but three votes. As evidence of his fight- 
i ing spirit at that time we have but to refer to his mas- 
terful speech on that occasion and his indignant chal- 
lenge to English arrogance. 



110 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"The objection that the Irish are below the privileges 
that emancipation would confer," he said, "I scorn to 
answer. You should answer it ; for that argument would 
say that you had governed the Irish so ill as to put them 
below the blessings of a free constitution. They want 
bread, it is said, and not liberty ; and then you leave them 
without bread and without liberty — and here your con- 
duct is as inconsistent as your assertion is unwarrant- 
able. You give the elective franchise to the people so 
described, and you refuse the representative to those who 
are not pretended to come within that description. 

"The objection that the Roman Catholics do not love 
liberty, I despise equally. What — in these walls to say 
so? In these walls that have witnessed their confirma- 
tion of Magna Charta thirty times, and in this city whose 
tower guards that great sacred instrument of liberty? 
There are now extant of those who trace themselves to 
the signature of the Charta three families ; they are Ro- 
man Catholics; they are petitioners, and they desire to 
share that liberty which their ancestors gave to the peo- 
ple of England." 

It was in the fall of the year of the delivery of this 
speech that the health of Grattan began to fail rap- 
idly. He retired for recuperation to the mountains of 
Wicklow. He caught a severe cold from the dews of 
the evening and on his return to Tinnehinch he was 
troubled with severe pains in his chest. In March, 
1820, he was able to go up to Dublin for the election, 
but the state of his health precluded his participation 
on the hustings. As his illness increased he mani- 
fested a deep anxiety to return to London for the 
opening of parliament, as he had set his heart on mak- 
ing one more appeal in behalf of his proscribed coun- 
trymen. He coveted one more honor — that of pre- 
senting the Catholic petition and making the motion. 



HENRY GRATTAN 111 

Realizing his condition he decided to make the jour- 
ney by slow stages. But toward the latter part of 
April his disease had made such alarming progress that 
his physicians positively forbade his attempting the 
journey. Turning to the men of science he said, "We 
are both right ; you in ordering me to stay, and I in de- 
ciding to go." He wrote to Sir Henry Parnell that he 
would reach London early in May, and to give notice 
that he would bring in the Catholic petition on the tenth. 
He grew weaker, but persisted in his determination. "I 
will bring in the petition," he said, "and then I will 
make my bow." By the first of the month, however, 
he was so much worse that he had to abandon the 
idea, and, at his request, Parnell announced a post- 
ponement of the motion until May twenty-fifth. On 
the twelfth of the month a deputation of Catholics 
waited upon him at his home, and he assured them he 
would present their petition. "My last breath," he 
said, "belongs to my country." 

Further efforts to dissuade him were abandoned. 
As he prepared for the journey, his friends called to 
make their farewells. "I will fall at my post," he said 
to one of them. When he set out for London his con- 
dition was little short of desperate. The quay was 
swarming with people who surrounded his carriage 
and cheered. Although greatly agitated, he called for 
some wine and drank to the health of the people of 
Dublin. On arriving at Liverpool he was met at the 
quay by an enthusiastic crowd, which insisted on tak- 
ing the horses from his carriage and drawing him to 
the hotel. By this time he was unable even to bear 
the jarring of carriages, and a boat, fitted up with 
mattresses and protected by canvas, was taken and he 



112 THE IRISH ORATORS 

proceeded by canal. When he reached London the 
physicians tried to dissuade him from going to the 
house, but in vain. The speaker proffered every aid 
and offered the use of his home. His strength failed 
him so rapidly after this, that he was compelled to 
surrender, and on June fourth, 1820, in the seventy- 
fourth year of his age, Henry Grattan passed from 
the service of Ireland. While it was his desire to be 
buried in his own country, on the ground bestowed 
upon him by the gratitude of his people, the universal 
demand of the empire was that he should rest among 
the statesmen of Westminster Abbey. And there he 
lies, side by side, with Charles James Fox — the man 
he loved, and by whom he was beloved. 

"Here, near yon walls so often shook 

By the stern might of his rebuke ; 

While bigotry, with blanching brow, 

Heard him, and blushed, but would not bow. 

Here, where his ashes may fulfil 

His country's cherished mission still, 

And when, by his example fired, 

Some patriot, like himself, inspired, 

Again the arduous theme shall try, 

For which 'twas his to live and die ; 

Here let him point his last appeal, 

Where statesmen and where kings shall kneel ; 

His bones will warn them to be just, 

Still pleading, even from the dust." 

IX 

No study of Grattan would be complete without 
some reference to the more personal side of his char- 
acter, which was gentle, lovable, generous and pure. 



HENRY PRATT AN 113 

If the orator of the parliament houses of Dublin and 
London was inspiring and admirable, the gentleman 
of Tinnehinch was charming and entertaining, and 
when he was talking in his library or while meander- 
ing about the exquisite valley of his home, he was 
quite as eloquent and illuminating as when he ad- 
dressed himself to senates or assemblies. Very soon 
after his marriage he sought a beautiful spot of com- 
parative seclusion whither he might repair for the 
pleasures of domesticity and recuperation, and his 
thoughts instinctively turned to the charming vale 
which had so entranced him in boyhood when visiting 
his uncle at Celbridge. It appears that it was one of 
the dreams of his youth ultimately to have a home in 
the county of Wicklow, for we find him writing to a 
friend, "I have not forgotten the romantic valley— 
I look on it with an eye of forecast — it may be the re- 
creation of an active life, or the retreat of an obscure 
one." The hills, the pastoral beauty of the valley, the 
waterfalls, the winding woodland paths, the little ruins 
of Tinnehinch made such an indelible impression upon 
his youth, that he sought a home amid its scenery, and 
that home, the solace of his sorrowing maturity, should 
have been his sepulcher. Not only is it associated with 
the sorrows of the despairing patriot — the spot where 
he meditated in agony of spirit upon the destruction of 
the parliament, the scene of the conferences in the in- 
terest of Catholic emancipation — but it had been pur- 
chased with the money bestowed upon him for the 
purpose by the gratitude of his country. Every mo- 
ment that he could properly spare from public service 
was lovingly devoted to the improvement of the estate. 
The inn at Tinnehinch was converted into a residence. 



114 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



We have amusing glimpses of Grattan battling with 
a mountain stream which baffled his efforts to restrain 
it and prevent its frequent inundation of the meadows. 
His assumption of the airs of a country gentleman 
appears to have been immensely diverting to his 
friends, and Sir Hercules Langrishe has handed down 
a pun about Grattan "contending with his overwhelm- 
ing Flood." He became deeply attached to the place, 
so much so that when during the dismal days of '98 
soldiers cut down some of the finest trees on the estate, 
his wife kept it from him lest the news might intensify 
his suffering. In his memorandum book is written his 
sorrow over the death of a favorite steward, and his 
regret that he could not be buried at Tinnehinch. He 
was never so happy as when surrounded at his home 
by the brilliant men he loved — Curran, Plunkett, Bur- 
rows, and lesser lights, with whom he wandered, boy- 
wise, through the woods, along the river, across the 
meadows. He was from his early youth an inveterate 
reader, and after he became a member of the imperial 
parliament, he found more time to minister to his 
taste for literature. When quite advanced in years he 
took up the study of French, and, for his own amuse- 
ment, translated into that language some of the stories 
of Miss Edgeworth, for whose novels he had a par- 
tiality. 

Throughout his life he was a lover of society, and 
after he entered the political activity of the empire, he 
found himself deluged with invitations to the most 
exclusive and brilliant houses in London. He was a 
frequent guest at Holland House, then in the heyday 
of its glory; at Spencer House, where Lady Spencer 
complained that the brilliancy of his conversation 



HENRY GRATTAN 115 

caused the guests to linger late into the night; at 
Devonshire House and Buckingham House — both 
noted as the rendezvous of the intellectually elect, and 
the politically powerful. Even in England, however, 
he preferred the country to the garish glories of the 
metropolis, and frequently, after his labors in the 
house he would take a boat down the Thames and 
walk along its beloved banks beneath the shade of its 
great elms. Occasionally he would make excursions 
into the country to a place where he could hear the 
nightingales, for he loved music "like an Italian." 

After his love of the country, and literature, he 
found his keenest delight in the theater. His son has 
given us a picture of a fascinating talk- f est at Tun- 
bridge Wells between Samuel Rogers, the poet, Grat- 
tan and Cumberland, who resided there at the time, in 
which the sole topics were dramas and actors — their 
relative merits, their eccentricities, their styles of act- 
ing. He prided himself on a critical knowledge of all 
the great artists of his time, and could regale a com- 
pany for an evening with criticisms of Garrick, Barry, 
Mrs. Fitzhenry, Kemble, Kean, Mrs. Siddons and 
Miss O'Neill. He was persuaded to accompany his 
son to see the latter, who came upon the scene rather 
late in his life, and he who had seen the master mum- 
mers of an earlier day went prepared to be disappointed 
with her impersonation of Ophelia. Before the eve- 
ning was over the veteran was in tears. He later saw 
her in Juliet and became one of her most devoted fol- 
lowers. 

His peculiar social charm appears to have been his 
simplicity, his boyishness, his utter lack of affectation, 
and while his conversation did not emit so many bril- 



116 THE IRISH ORATORS 

liant, dazzling sparks as that of Curran whose mim- 
icry and drollery were irresistible, it possessed a con- 
stant glow. There was substance in all he said even 
at the dinner table. It is said that of all the brilliant 
men with whom he associated in his earlier life — and 
they were the ornaments of Ireland — none could ap- 
proach him in the felicity with which he could, if given 
time, strike off a characterization of a man or a 
woman. 

Grattan was extremely human, with human weak- 
nesses, even to the writing of bad poetry. No man 
was ever more loyal in his friendships. He never 
broke with a friend until he felt that friend had broken 
with his country, and it was this conviction which led 
to the break with Flood. His love for Curran was 
tender; his love of Charlemont so intense that he per- 
mitted no political differences to come between them; 
his love of Fox so deep that he forgave his not un- 
natural timidity in failing to press Catholic emancipa- 
tion as he felt should have been done; and he loved 
Plunkett as a father loves a son. Among the great 
Irish orators there lived none purer, truer, sweeter, 
nobler than Henry Grattan. 

X 

It is probable that the average critic would pro- 
nounce Grattan the greatest of the Irish orators. In a 
physical sense he did not possess the advantages of 
O'Connell, Plunkett or Meagher, but was handicapped 
to a degree almost equal to Curran. There was noth- 
ing commanding in his stature, which was medium, 
nor in his proportions, which were slight. If his form 



HENRY GRATTAN 117 

was slender it was at least graceful, and there was a 
glow to his countenance more arresting than mere 
bulk. His voice, while lacking in richness, and not 
strong enough for tumultuous outdoor meetings, pos- 
sessed a variety of tones which lent themselves to 
musical modulation; and while he spoke ordinarily 
with great rapidity his enunciation was so perfect that 
not a syllable was slurred, and he was understood per- 
fectly in all parts of the house. In striving for effect 
he had a manner of raising his voice to the highest 
pitch and suddenly lowering it almost to a whisper. 
No man, according to his contemporaries, could put 
so much of scorn into the pronunciation of a single 
word. His delivery was not such as might have been 
expected from a close student of the stage. His ges- 
tures were explosive rather than graceful, wholly un- 
studied, and at first a trifle disconcerting. It was this 
phase of his art which sent a momentary chill through 
his English friends during the first few moments of 
his initial speech in the imperial house of commons. 
The impressiveness of his delivery consisted almost 
entirely in the intense earnestness and ardor with 
which he spoke. 

He made no pretense to speaking without prepara- 
tion. While it is probable that some of his finer 
passages, such as the peroration to his speech on the 
Declaration of Rights, were written out and memo- 
rized, it was his method merely to jot down the heads 
of his speech. His superiority, as an agitator, over all 
his predecessors, consisted in his genius in sprinkling 
his speeches with catch phrases which were eagerly 
seized upon by the multitude as shibboleths. One of 
the few complaints of his critics has been that he re- 



118 THE IRISH ORATORS 

lied too extensively upon the epigram. He appears to 
have fallen naturally into the use of this rhetorical 
weapon. He resorted to imagery, in common with all 
the Irish orators, but unlike many, he curbed his fancy, 
toned down his figures, and gave to his pictures a pol- 
ish that places them above rebuke. No speaker ever 
felt more passionately than he, but in his most power- 
ful denunciations he never permitted the intensity of 
his passion to push him to the extremes of expression. 
While not perhaps so close a reasoner as Flood, the 
argumentative features of his orations are the most 
impressive, never overburdened with ornament, or 
illustration. Feeling that he was speaking for pos- 
terity he fortified himself with all available knowledge 
on the subject he discussed. Thus his speeches on 
tithes are treatises, his speeches in behalf of Catholic 
emancipation are histories. In this regard he greatly 
resembled Edmund Burke, and like Burke, too, he in- 
terspersed his discourses with philosophical comments 
of a high order. Unlike some of his Irish contempo- 
raries he was a master in the art of condensation. He 
possessed the knack of saying as much in a paragraph 
as some men are able to say in a speech. This was 
partly due to his genius in the selection of his topics 
as well as to his capacity for concise statement. It is 
worthy of comment that with Grattan concise state- 
ment does not imply jerky, prosy sentences. On the 
contrary he was able to impart a musical rhythm to 
his sentences suggestive of the Greeks. But after all is 
said regarding the mechanical features of his art, the 
fact remains that his vast superiority lies in the nobil- 
ity and purity of spirit that shines through his speeches. 
Critics are agreed that few modern orators have 



HENRY GRATTAN 119 

surpassed him in the power of invective and bitter 
sarcasm. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom 
of his attack on Flood, there can be but one opinion 
as to the overpowering manner in which it was made. 
Its closing paragraph will give some idea of the nature 
of the whole : 

"I will interrupt him, and say, Sir, you are much mis- 
taken if you think that your talents have been as great 
as your life has been reprehensible; you began your par- 
liamentary career with an acrimony and personality 
which could only have been justified by a supposition 
of virtue: after a rank and clamorous opposition you 
became on a sudden silent; you were silent for seven 
years ; you were silent on the greatest questions, and you 
were silent for money. In 1773, while a negotiation was 
pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you ab- 
sconded from your duty in parliament, you forsook your 
law of Poyning's, you forsook the questions of economy 
and abandoned all the old themes of your former dec- 
lamation ; you were not at that period to be found in the 
house; you were seen, like a guilty spirit, haunting the 
lobby of the house of commons, watching the moment 
in which the question should be put, that you might van- 
ish ; you were descried, with a criminal anxiety, retiring 
from the scenes of your past glory ; or you were perceived 
coasting the upper benches of this house, like a bird of 
prey, with an evil aspect and a sepulchral note, meditat- 
ing to pounce on its quarry : — these ways, they were not 
the ways of honor, you practised pending a negotiation 
which was to end either in your sale or your sedition: 
the former taking place, you supported the rankest meas- 
ures that ever came before parliament — the embargo of 
1776, for instance. 'O fatal embargo, that breach of law 
and ruin of commerce.' You supported the unparalleled 
profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous 
ministry — the address to support the American war, the 
other address to send four thousand men, which you had 



120 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



yourself declared to be necessary for the defense of Ire- 
land, to fight against the liberties of America, to which 
you had declared yourself a friend ; you, Sir, who delight 
to utter execrations against the American commissioners 
of 1778, on account of their hostility to America; you, 
Sir, who manufacture stage thunder against Mr. Eden, 
for his anti-American principles; you, Sir, whom it 
pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden ; you, 
Sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America ; 
and you, Sir, voted four thousand Irish troops to cut 
the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, 
fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, 
liberty; but you found at last — and this should be an 
eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning — that 
the king had only dishonored you ; the court had bought, 
but would not trust you ; and, having voted for the worst 
measures, you remained for seven years the creature of 
salary without the confidence of government. Mortified 
at the discovery, and stung by disappointment, you be- 
take yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity ; you try 
the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts 
of an incendiary; you give no honest support either to 
the government or to the people ; you, at the most critical 
period of their existence, take no part, you sign no non- 
consumption agreement, you are no Volunteer, you op- 
pose no Perpetual Mutiny bill, no altered Sugar bill ; you 
declare that you lament that the Declaration of Rights 
should have been brought forward ; and observing, with 
regard to prince and people, the most impartial treachery 
and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your sovereign 
by betraying the government as you had sold the people : 
until, at last, by this hollow conduct and for some other 
steps, the result of mortified ambition — being dismissed 
and another person put in your place — you fly to the 
ranks of the Volunteers and canvass for mutiny; you 
announce that the country was ruined by other men dur- 
ing that period in which she had been sold by you. Your 
logic is that the repeal of the Declaratory act is not the 
repeal of a law at all, and the effect of that logic is an 



HENRY GRATTAN 121 

English act affecting to emancipate Ireland by exercising 
over her the legislative authority of the British parlia- 
ment. Such has been your conduct, and at such conduct 
every order of your fellow subjects have a right to ex- 
claim. The merchant may say to you—the constitutionalist 
may say to you — the American may say to you — and I, I 
now say to your beard, Sir — you are not an honest man." 

One of Grattan's oratorical devices in which he sur- 
passed was in the mingling of a tribute to some abused 
person with a denunciation, sarcastic or otherwise, of 
those making the attack. This can be illustrated in 
his defense of Doctor Kirwin : 

"What is the case of Doctor Kirwin? That man pre- 
ferred this country and our religion, and brought to both 
a genius superior to what he found in either ; he called 
forth the latent virtues of the human heart, and taught 
men to discover in themselves a mine of charity, of which 
the proprietors had been unconscious ; in feeding the lamp 
of charity he had almost exhausted the lamp of life ; he 
comes to interrupt the repose of the pulpit, and shakes 
one world with the thunder of the other. The preacher's 
desk becomes the throne of light; around him a train, 
not such as crouch and swagger at the leveesof princes 
—horse, foot and dragoon — but that wherewith a great 
genius peoples his own state ; charity in action, and vice 
in humiliation ; vanity, arrogance and pride appalled by 
the rebuke of the preacher, and cheated for a moment of 
their native improbity. What reward? Saint Nicholas 
within, or Saint Nicholas without. The curse of Swift 
is upon him to have been born an Irishman ; to have pos- 
sessed a genius, and to have used his talents for the good 
of his country. Had this man, instead of being the 
brightest of preachers, been the dullest of lawyers ; had 
he added to dulness venality ; had he aggravated the crime 
of venality, and sold his vote, he had been a judge : or, 
had he been born a blockhead, bred a slave and trained 



122 THE IRISH ORATORS 

up in a great English family, and handed over as a house- 
hold circumstance to the Irish viceroy, he would have 
been an Irish bishop and an Irish peer, with a great pat- 
ronage, perhaps a borough, and had returned members 
to vote against Ireland, and the Irish parochial clergy 
must have adored his stupidity and deified his dulness. 
But, under the present system, Ireland is not the element 
in which a native genius can rise, unless he sells that 
genius to the court and atones by the apostacy of his con- 
duct for the crime of his nativity." 

No better example of Grattan's power of brilliant 
denunciation can be found anywhere, perhaps, than in 
his speech on Napoleon in the British parliament in 
1815, but the speech should be read in its entirety to 
be appreciated at its true value. I shall conclude the 
illustrations of Grattan's manner of mingling rebuke 
with tribute by quoting his beautiful reference to Lord 
Charlemont in connection with his dismissal from the 
ministry : 

"We see the old general who led you to your consti- 
tution march off; dismissed by your ministry as unfit to 
be trusted with the government of a county ; the cockade 
of government struck from his hat. That man whose ac- 
complishments gave a grace to your cause, and whose 
patriotism gave a credit to your nobles ; whom the rabble 
itself could not see without veneration, as if they beheld 
something not only good, but sacred. The man who, 
drooping and faint when you began your struggle, for- 
got his infirmity and found in the recovery of your con- 
stitution a vital principle added to his own. The man 
who, smit with the eternal love of fame and freedom, 
carried the people's standard until he planted it on the 
citadel of freedom — see him dismissed from his govern- 
ment for those very virtues, and by that very minister 
for whose continuance you are to thank the king. See 
him overwhelmed at once with the adoration of his coun- 
try and the displeasure of her ministers. The history' 



HENRY GRATTAN 123 

of nations is ofttimes a farce. What is the history of 
that nation that having, at the hazard of everything dear 
to her free constitution, obtained its mistress, banishes 
the champion and commits the honor of the lady to the 
care of the ravisher? There was a time when the vault 
of liberty could hardly contain the flight of your pinion ; 
some of you went forth like a giant rejoicing in his 
strength; and now you stand like elves, at the door of 
your own pandemonium. The armed youth of the coun- 
try, like a thousand streams, thundered from a thousand 
hills, and filled the plain with the congregated waters in 
whose mirror was seen, for a moment, the watery image 
of the British constitution; the waters subside, the tor- 
rents cease, the rill ripples within its own bed, and the 
boys and children of the village paddle in the brook." 

Few of the great orators have had a greater felicity 
of expression or could, in a sentence, throw out a sug- 
gestion of such great significance. Thus, in speaking 
of the patriots who made terms with the ministry, he 
said that "they became the tail of the court and ceased 
to be the head of the people." Again, when it was 
proposed to conciliate, he says, "be assured that Eng- 
land will never grant to your meanness what she re- 
fuses to your virtue." Replying to the suggestion that 
certain wrongs were righted by the lack of prosecu- 
tion, he exclaimed that "robbery unpunished does not 
repeal the decalogue." Touching upon the adoption 
of a police law in Dublin which had been rejected in 
London, he shamed the parliament by saying that "the 
ministers looked for a plan, and they found it in the 
dirt, where the spirit and good sense of the city of 
London had cast it." Objecting to the expenditure 
of money for the building of an official mansion, he 
said : "I had much rather, if you were to go to a great 
expense for an edifice where you had not income for 



124 THE IRISH ORATORS 

your establishment, I had much rather see a hospital 
built to humanity, where age and infirmity should sit 
smiling at the gate, than this temple, built to penal 
laws, where the revenue officer presides with a quill 
in his wig and a penal clause in his pocket." Speak- 
ing of the purchase of parliamentary seats and the sale 
of legislators, he scornfully exclaims: "I see some 
who would make a merit of being publicly obnoxious, 
and would canvass for the favor of the British min- 
ister, by exhibiting the wounds of their reputation." 
Again, on the same subject, he says: "They (coun- 
try gentlemen) must see and despise the pitiful policy 
of buying the country gentleman with an offer to wrap 
him up in the old castor? clothes of the aristocracy 
— a clumsy covering, and a thin disguise; never the 
subject of your respect, and frequently the subject of 
your derision." One of his most telling and pathetic 
sentences that made an impression was that "the path 
of public treachery in a principal country leads to the 
block, but in a nation governed like a province to the 
helm." Answering the sneer that many of the Cath- 
olics were uneducated, he asked : "Can we, who have 
enacted darkness, reproach the Catholics with a want 
of light?" Warning against the French revolutionary 
philosophy, he said: "Touch not the plant of Gallic 
growth; its fruit is death, though it is not the tree 
of knowledge." Arguing that the empire could not 
object to the Irish in foreign armies as long as Ire- 
land is made an impossible place of residence, he aptly 
said: "We met our own laws at Fontenoy." Insist- 
ing that the government had no right to interfere with 
the religion of the subject, he exclaimed : "The naked 
Irishman has a right to approach his God without a 



HENRY GRATTAN 125 

license from his king." Illustrations of Grattan's fe- 
licity of expression could be multiplied indefinitely. 

No orator ever understood or appreciated more 
thoroughly the advantages of the right sort of exor- 
dium or peroration. His method in opening was to 
rush directly to the point at issue — to state it chal- 
lengingly, defiantly, concisely in a sentence. His pero- 
rations are almost invariably eloquent, touching, 
deeply impressive. One more will be given. 

"They advance — the Catholics — from the wilderness 
where for a hundred years they have wandered, and they 
come laden with their families and their goods, whether 
conducted by an invisible hand, or by a cloudy pillar, or 
a guardian fire, and they desire to be received into your 
hospitable constitution. Will the elders of the land come 
forth to greet them? Or will the British ministry send 
forth their hornet to sting them back into the desert? 
I mentioned that their claim was sustained by a power 
above ; look up ! Behold the balances of heaven ! Pride 
in the scale against justice, and pride flies up and kicks 
the beam." 

Among the great orators of Ireland Henry Grattan 
is fortunate in his relations to posterity. His speeches 
are inseparably connected with the most fascinating 
period of his country's history. His is the psean and 
the lament. The student of the past will turn to Grat- 
tan to complete his understanding of the Declaration 
of Rights that marked Ireland's redemption, and of 
the union which marked her fall. Nor can the lover 
of religious liberty fail to find in his masterful pleas 
for Catholic emancipation much that is inspiring and 
illuminating. Fortunately for his fame in England 
and America his style, while not perfect, perhaps, has 



126 [THE IRISH ORATORS 

met with the commendation of the critics. The stu- 
dent of British eloquence may pass by the speeches of 
Flood as stilted and antiquated, those of Plunkett as 
prosy, and those of Sheil as strained; if he be some- 
thing of a dullard he may even ignore Curran because 
his figures were sometimes too startling; or O'Connell 
because he spoke the language of the people; or Phil- 
lips because he spoke the language of the clouds; but 
no one who would know the masterpieces of British 
eloquence can afford to ignore Henry Grattan any 
more than Chatham, Burke, Fox or Pitt. 



Ill 

JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 

The Rebellion of '98; the Anarchy of the Courts; the Story of 
Packed Juries and Informers; the Reign of Terror 

THE infamies toward Ireland for which England 
must eventually answer to posterity have not been 
confined to the enactment of laws to destroy her com- 
merce and industries or to debase and humiliate her 
people. They have not been confined to the treachery 
and corruption through which she struck down the 
parliament of Dublin, to the massacres of the inno- 
cents or the heartless evictions of women and children. 
The blackest, basest, most atrocious chapter will be re- 
served for her legalized assassinations of Irish patriots 
under the forms of law as related in shameful tales 
of the state trials of the latter days of the eighteenth 
and the early days of the nineteenth centuries. 

It was incidental to the insurrection of '98 that 
England, through her constituted authorities, began to 
mob the law. The rights of citizens were ruthlessly 
brushed aside and trampled beneath the feet of venal 
judges whose ermine dripped the slime of corruption. 
Evidence was secured through torture, and the in- 
former, the most repulsive excrescence of humanity, 
was made a pampered favorite of the state. The 
patriot was tried before judges who understood that 

127 



128 THE IRISH ORATORS 

the government expected convictions and executions. 
The court rooms were packed, in numerous notable 
cases, with the soldiery whose rattling musketry was 
intended to intimidate the advocate who dared demand 
for his Irish client the protection of the law. The 
juries were deliberately packed with the prejudiced 
and the purchased ; and in at least one instance where 
the jurors thus selected recoiled in horror from the 
crime expected of them, the constituted authorities 
did not hesitate to introduce liquor into their delibera- 
tions and death warrants were written with the trem- 
bling fingers of drunken men. 

The heroes of '98, however, were not left entirely 
naked to their enemies. One man there was whom 
the gruesome scaffolds, the thousand graves, the glis- 
tening bayonets, the scowling court and the bloody 
ministry could not silence. Ireland found a voice for 
her unfortunate sons. It was the voice of genius-^-a 
voice so eloquent that its message has been carried 
down through the century and will instruct the world 
in the deep damnation of '98 as long as the language 
lives. It was the voice of that marvelous man, the 
most lovable, in many respects the most brilliant genius 
that Ireland has produced — the voice of John Philpot 
Curran. 






In the year 1750 there were probably few villages in 
Ireland more obscure than the village of Newmarket 
in the county of Cork. Among the quaint characters 
of the community was James Curran, a descendant of 
one of Cromwell's soldiers who, in a minor position, 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 129 

eked out a mere existence with a meager salary. He 
was the object of much amusement because of his love 
of disputation and his familiarity with the Greek and 
Roman classics. Among the villagers, however, he 
was looked upon as inferior in mentality to his wife, 
who was saturated with the poetic traditions of Erin 
and could relate the beautiful stories of the olden 
time, be fore the fairies tripped away, with an eloquence 
that fascinated her humble audiences. It is not re- 
markable that even in this obscure village of the county 
of Cork the child of parents so unusual should develop 
qualities beyond the ordinary, and soon the village 
gossips transferred their attention from the parents 
to the child who was born on July twenty- fourth and 
called John Philpot Curran. 

There were no Froissarts lingering then in New- 
market to chronicle the career of the ragged genius 
and little is known of his childhood beyond the fact 
that he possessed his mother's wit and fancy and an 
irreverential and mischievous disposition. Unkempt, 
dirty no doubt, but effervescent with the joy of living, 
he played marbles and frequented the fairs where he 
delighted in the interchange of repartee, and still more 
in the fights that followed the frolics. One day while 
playing in the street an old gentleman stood by enjoy- 
ing the originality of the boy's observations, his wit 
and waggery. He invited the boy to his home, taught 
him the classics, and persuaded his parents to give him 
a thorough education. He progressed with remarkable 
rapidity in his studies and in his nineteenth year he 
matriculated at old Trinity. 

Curran's career at college inspired him with that 
ardent love of the classics that never grew cold and 



130 THE IRISH ORATORS 

developed the social qualities which endeared him in 
later years to the brilliant circles that surrounded him. 
Here we get our first glimpse of Cur ran the mimic, the 
wit, the royal spendthrift, the brilliant raconteur, . and 
see him rattling his few remaining shillings like a lord 
as he plunged into the rollicking life of the town with 
wild abandon. 

On leaving Trinity he renounced his original ambi- 
tion for an ecclesiastical career and went to London 
where he enrolled as a student of law in the society 
of the Middle Temple. This period marked the fasci- 
nating development of that rare genius which was des- 
tined to link his name with that of the choice spirits 
of the age. The bustle and brilliancy of London 
thrilled while it froze him. For the first time in his 
life he faced the world, and the sorrows of humanity 
were impressed upon his sensibilities — sorrows with 
which he was to become so familiar and to use so ef- 
fectively in reaching the hearts of men. He wrote to 
a friend that "the thousand gilded chariots" would 
make one think that "the world assembled to play the 
fool in London unless you believe the report of the 
passing bells and hearses." On learning with horror 
that in the room adjoining his a man had been dead 
and utterly neglected for two days he whimsically 
wrote that he played a dirge on a Jew's-harp, and 
would continue the funereal tribute while "he con- 
tinues to be my neighbor." Who shall say that little 
incidents like these did not enter into the weaving of 
the splendid woof of Curran's genius — a genius which 
saw laughter through tears. 

The throbbing life of the metropolis kindled his am- 
bition and he devoted himself with assiduity to his 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 131 

studies. He was much too poor and obscure to touch 
even the outer fringe of the high society that was 
later to do him homage. But while meandering about 
the coffee houses he once caught sight of Goldsmith — 
a kindred genius — and once he gazed with awe upon 
Mansfield on the bench. Several times his improvi- 
dence led him to the theater where he was captivated 
by the art of Garrick. It was this very improvidence 
which paved the way for his one meeting with a celeb- 
rity while in London. His money gone, his remittance 
delayed, and unable to dine, he sauntered forth gaily 
enough into Saint James' Park, where he sat down on 
a bench and whistled a melancholy Irish air, a re- 
minder of his native village. The old tune attracted 
the attention of an old man at the other end of the 
bench. 

'Tray, sir, may I venture to ask where you learned 
that tune ?" inquired the stranger. 

"Indeed, sir, indeed you may, sir," replied Curran; 
"I learned it in my native country, in Ireland." 

"But how comes it, sir, at this hour when other peo- 
ple are dining, you remain here whistling old Irish 
airs?" 

"Alas, sir, I, too, have been in the habit of dining," 
Curran replied, "but, to-day, my money gone, my 
credit not yet arrived, I am even forced to come and 
dine upon a whistle in the park." 

The old man was Macklin, the Irish actor, and that 
day Curran dined as the guest of the actor. A few 
years later when they met again it was at a fashion-* 
able dinner in Dublin where Macklin was the guest of 
honor and Curran was invited to impart brilliance to 
the banquet. 



132 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



It was at this period that he began, in part uncon- 
sciously, to aid in the development of his genius. His 
reading at this time was significant. The melancholy 
beauty of Thompson's Seasons made a passionate ap- 
peal to him, and he read Sterne, that master of the 
artistry of word weaving, while Junius and Paradise 
Lost were studied and read aloud for oratorical style. 
The unconscious part of his training came in his at- 
tendance on wakes and weddings where he received 
his lesson in pathos and mirth, and in his familiar in- 
tercourse with the peasantry. On his vacations at 
Newmarket, he fathomed and learned to know the 
Irish heart. The most impressive phase of his London 
development, however, was in the stubborn molding, of 
his oratorical art. He was naturally eloquent, but not 
an orator by nature. Because of a confusion in his 
speech, which had led his comrades to dub him "Stut- 
tering Jack/' he set to work doggedly to remedy the 
defect, but it was long before he overcame the diffi- 
culty. While he was a persistent attendant at debating 
societies, his timidity and self-depreciation restrained 
him from participating in the discussions until his re- 
sentment of the pseudonym of "Orator Mum," and his 
over-indulgence, while dining, in a glass of punch, 
drove him into a debate in which he distinguished 
himself. He read aloud by the hour to improve his 
enunciation, imitated the tones of various orators he 
had heard and read the orations. Realizing that his 
presence was not impressive — for he was short, slight 
and ill-proportioned — he practised recitations before 
the mirror, studying gesticulation. He studied oratory 
as an art, and it was an artist, as well as a lawyer, that 
traveled back to Ireland in 1775 and became a mem- 




John Philpot Curran 

From a rare engraving 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 133 

ber of the bar of which he was so soon to become the 
brightest ornament of a century, and the sole rival of 
Erskine, among all the forensic gladiators of Great 
Britain. 



II 



It was inevitable that one of such unusual eloquence 
should drift into parliament, and soon Curran became 
a member of the scintillating house of commons of 
that time where he came into intimate association with 
Flood, Grattan, Burgh and Yelverton, and was soon 
catalogued with them in capacity. While his parlia- 
mentary career was brilliant he necessarily played a 
secondary part to Flood and Grattan, and his speeches 
while masterful and inspiring, lose in public interest 
beside the more memorable orations delivered in the 
courts. His first participation in debate was in sup- 
port of Flood's measure of parliamentary reform on 
the historic evening when the venerable orator, dressed 
in the uniform of the Volunteers, and supported by 
members of that organization in the gallery, shocked 
the more conservative of the statesmen, and Curran's 
fire and force created a lively enthusiasm among the 
auditors. Within a few weeks he was engaged in an 
acrimonious exchange of compliments with Lord 
Clare, the renegade, which ended on the dueling field.* 

* The duel between Curran and Clare grew out of a debate to 
which Lord Clare had invited the beautiful Duchess of Rut- 
land and the other ladies of the Castle circle to hear him "put 
down Curran." The latter having heard of the boast and noticing 
the presence of the Duchess in the gallery took advantage of a 
doze into which Clare had fallen to force the fighting. "I hope," 
he said, "I may say a few words on this great subject without 
disturbing the sleep of any right honorable gentleman, and yet, 



134 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Within a year he was attacking the pension list with 
a sarcasm and satire quite as effective as Grattan's in- 
spired eloquence, and henceforth he acted consistently 
with the little band of patriots who battled desperately 
against the corruption of the Castle and the plan of 
union. A Protestant himself, he joined Grattan in 
pleading for Catholic emancipation, and upon the re- 
call of Lord Fitzwilliam he solemnly warned the gov- 
ernment that its policies were tending toward insur- 
rection, for he foresaw the spirit of '98. As late as 
1796 he gave ardent support to Ponsonby's plan for 
parliamentary reform which provided for the grant- 
ing of civil rights to the Catholics. The boldness of 
his attacks upon the corruption of the Castle may be 
illustrated from the following extract from one of his 
most notable parliamentary speeches : 

"I rise," he said, "with the deep concern and melan- 
choly hesitation which a man must feel who does not know 
whether he is addressing an independent parliament, the 
representatives of the people of Ireland, or whether he is 
addressing the representatives of corruption. I rise to make 
the experiment ; and I approach the question with all those 
awful feelings of a man who finds a dear friend pros- 
trate and wounded on the ground, and who dreads lest 
the means he may use to recover him may only show 
that he is dead and gone forever. I rise to make an 
experiment on the representatives of the people, whether 
they have abdicated their trust, and have become the 
paltry representatives of Castle influence. ... I rise 

perhaps, I ought rather to envy than blame the tranquillity of the 
right honorable gentleman. I do not feel myself so happily 
tempered as to be lulled to repose by the storms that shake the 
land. If they invite rest to any, that rest ought not to be lav- 
ished on the guilty spirit." In the duel that resulted Curran had 
the first shot without effect, and Clare took aim for nearly half 
a minute and missed. 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 135 

in an assembly of three hundred persons, one hundred 
of whom have places or pensions ; I rise in an assembly, 
one-third of whom have their ears set against the com- 
plaints of the people and their eyes intently turned to 
their own interests; I rise before the whisperers of the 
treasury, the bargainers, the runners of the Castle; I 
address an audience before whom was held forth the 
doctrine that the crown ought to use its influence on this 
house. 

"I should not be surprised if bad men of great talents 
should endeavor to enslave a people; but when I see 
folly uniting with vice, corruption with imbecility, men 
without talent attempting to overthrow our liberty, my 
indignation rises at the presumption and audacity of the 
attempt. That such men should creep into power is a 
fatal symptom of the constitution; the political, like the 
material body, when it nears its dissolution, often bursts 
out in swarms of vermin. 

"In this administration a place can be found for every 
bad man, whether it be to distribute the wealth of the 
treasury, to vote in the house, to whisper and to bargain, 
to stand at the door and note the entrance and exits of 
members, to mark whether they earn their wages — 
whether it be for the hireling who comes for his hire, 
or for the drunken aide-de-camp who staggers in a 
brothel; nay, some of them find their way to the treas- 
ury bench, the political musicians, or hurdy-gurdy men, 
to pipe the praises of the viceroy." 

Such denunciations, however, could not penetrate 
the hide of the hirelings of the Castle who sat in the 
house prepared to sell the liberties of their country. 
At length, discouraged, disgusted, foreseeing the 
shameful end, Curran retired from parliament and 
was spared the humiliation of being a member of the 
assembly at the time of its wholesale purchase by the 
mercenaries of William Pitt. He also, no doubt, had 
his personal reasons for severing his connection witl> 



136 THE IRISH ORATORS 

public life. He was too discriminating a critic not t( 
know that his parliamentary speeches were far inferior 
to those at the bar, and he probably had enough of the 
pride of authorship to wish to appear before the public 
at his best. It has been suggested that in common 
with the great majority of forensic orators he was not 
adapted to the parliamentary method of discussion. 
In view of the fragments of his speeches in the house 
of commons this can scarcely be said of Curran. There 
are passages of his speeches on the pension list and 
the Catholic question that bear the unmistakable im- 
print of genius. 

In later years, in conversation with Charles Phillips, 
he gave his own explanation, which seems the probable 
true one. "I was a person," he said, "attached to a 
great political party, whose leaders were men of im- 
portance in the state, totally devoted to those political 
pursuits from which my mind was necessarily dis- 
tracted by studies of a different description. They 
allotted me my station in debate, which being generally 
in the rear, was seldom brought into action until near 
the close of the engagement. After having toiled 
through the Four Courts for the entire day, I brought 
to the house of commons a person enfeebled and a 
mind exhausted. I was compelled to speak late at 
night and had to rise early for the-judges in the morn- 
ing and my efforts were consequently crude ; and where 
others had the whole day for the correction of a speech, 
I was left at the mercy of inability or inattention." 

Notwithstanding this self-depreciation of the orator, 
it is probable that had he never delivered his marvelous 
masterpieces in the courts to overshadow the memory 
of his parliamentary efforts these alone would have 



JOHN PHILPOI CURRAN 137; 

been sufficient to have preserved his fame among the 
bright particular stars of Irish eloquence. 

Ill 

Occasionally an advocate appears in a cause of such 
transcendent importance to the public that his name 
and genius are linked with the cause. It was the good 
fortune of Curran to be the champion of the succession 
of patriots whose causes were the causes of the nation, 
and to stand forth in a period of persecutions and op- 
pression as the trusted champion of — a People. At a 
time when the liberty of Ireland was expiring, with 
freedom of discussion prohibited, the liberty of the 
press denied, and the writ of habeas corpus sus- 
pended, while the miserable creatures of the Castle 
were inaugurating a reign of terror through the con- 
version of the courts into bloody shambles, it was the 
privilege of Curran to stand defiantly in the very pres- 
ence of power and to expose the perfidy of the con- 
spiracy against the land of his nativity. The role he 
essayed called for more genius than that of O'Connell 
on the hustings, and for more intrepidity than that of 
Fitzgerald, and more probity than either. Pleading 
his causes in the days of intimidating judges and 
packed juries, he frequently failed to save his client 
from the vengeance of the hideous pack that hounded 
him, but through his genius and inspired eloquence he 
has pilloried, for all time, the enemies of the liberties 
of his people. 

Curran had reached his forty- fourth year and was 
in the full bloom of his superb genius when there be- 
gan the series of state trials which placed him to the 



138 THE IRISH ORATORS 

at this time that Archibald Rowan, secretary of the 
United Irishmen of Dublin, published an address to 
the Volunteers of Ireland, boldly dwelling upon the 
dangers confronting the public security both from 
within and without and calling upon them to resume 
their arms for the preservation of the public tran- 
quillity. This was dynamite to the Castle. He was 
promptly arrested on the charge of seditious libel, and 
it was in his defense that Cur ran delivered the splendid 
oration considered to be his masterpiece. 

This speech, and the incidents surrounding its de- 
livery, made a profound impression on the country. 
In the popular imagination the cause took on a na- 
tional character. It was not a battle between an in- 
dividual and the Castle — it was a battle between Ire- 
land and the English ministry. That the dignitaries 
of the state so considered it was evident in the sig- 
nificant presence of soldiery in the court room — placed 
there to awe the jury and intimidate the advocate. 
The court room was thronged with people and the sur- 
rounding streets were crowded. Ridiculing the idea 
of sedition and proclaiming Rowan's description of 
conditions as his own, Curran defied the government 
to the delight of the people, and paid tribute to the 
Volunteers in a passage of brilliant beauty : 

"You can not but remember," he said, "that at a time 
when we had scarcely a soldier for our defense, when 
the old and the young were alarmed and terrified with 
apprehensions of a descent upon our coasts, that Prov- 
idence seemed to have worked a miracle in our favor. 
You saw a band of armed men come forth at the great 
call of nature, of honor and their country. You saw 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 139 

men of the greatest wealth and rank — you saw every 
class of the community give up its members, and send 
them armed into the field to protect the public and pri- 
vate tranquillity of Ireland. It is impossible for any 
man to turn back to that period without reviving those 
sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which then beat 
in the public bosom; to recollect amidst what applause, 
what tears, what prayers, what benedictions, they walked 
forth amongst spectators, agitated by the mingled sen- 
sations of terror and of reliance, of danger and of pro- 
tection, imploring the blessings of heaven upon their 
heads, and its conquests upon their swords. That illus- 
trious, that adored and abused body of men stood for- 
ward and assumed the title, which I trust the gratitude 
of their country will never blot from its history — 'The 
Volunteers of Ireland/ " 

In language of classic purity he appealed to the na- 
tional pride by making invidious comparisons between 
the apparent rights of the Irish and the conceded rights 
of the people across the channel, reaching a climax 
in an audacious invocation of the spirit of the Brit- 
ish law : 

"1 speak in the spirit of the British law which makes 
liberty commensurate with and inseparable from the Brit- 
ish soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and the 
sojourner, the moment he sets foot on British earth, that 
the ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated 
by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in 
what language his doom may have been pronounced; no 
matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an 
Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him ; no 
matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have 
been cloven down ; no matter with what solemnities he 
may have been immolated upon the altar of slavery — 
the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the al- 
tar and the god sink together in the dust ; his soul walks 
abroad in its own majesty; his body swells beyond the 



140 THE IRISH ORATORS 

measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and 
he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled by the 
irresistible genius of universal emancipation." 

This lyric burst of eloquence, delivered with the 
glow of one inspired, so thrilled the spectators that, 
in the very presence of the frowning authorities and 
the startled soldiery, they broke into applause, and it 
was some time before sufficient order could be restored 
to permit the orator to proceed. Gathering force now 
and assuming greater audacity, Curran no longer de- 
fended his client ; he lectured the Castle, or, better still, 
he took Ireland for his client and in defending her 
claim to human rights he entered upon a defense of the 
liberty of the press that was never surpassed by Er- 
skine or Mackintosh. And when, in a final burst of 
supreme eloquence, he concluded, the hostility of court 
and armed men was again forgotten and the court 
room rang with the cheers of the people. As he left 
the room the throng outside, beside itself with enthu- 
siasm, disregarded the importunities of the little ge- 
nius to desist and literally picked him up and carried 
him to his home in triumph. 

This speech, which deeply moved the people, failed 
to acquit his client ; but a few weeks later, when Doc- 
tor William Brennan was prosecuted on a similar 
charge and Curran again defended, the prosecution 
failed. 

The marvelous effect of Curran' s defense of Rowan 
was not lost upon the Castle, and every effort was 
made through his more timid friends to persuade him 
to desert the cause of his country and ally himself 
with the sycophants of the ministry, but the tempter 
was turned aside with contempt. 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 141 

In the spring of the following year Curran was 
called upon to defend William Jackson on a charge 
of treason. This unfortunate gentleman had become 
infatuated with the revolutionary idea in France and 
returned to Ireland with a view to determining the 
feasibility of an armed invasion by the French. Un- 
suspecting and unworldly, he fell in with an informer, 
and was betrayed to the authorities. The establish- 
ment of his guilt rested solely upon the evidence of 
a single person and, while two witnesses were nec- 
essary to convict in England in cases of this character, 
the pliant Irish courts ruled that in Ireland one would 
do. This was vital in that it prepared the way for 
the loose methods through which the government was 
able to rid itself of suspects later on, and Curran made 
a vigorous assault upon the one rule in England and 
another in Ireland. The establishment of this rule 
laid down the bars to the "informer," that monster 
of perversity who was to become the ablest coadjutor 
of the Castle in the series of state trials that were 
to follow. The conviction of Jackson followed the 
adoption of the rule, but Curran, through his fight, 
has given to history the shameful story of the assassin 
methods of the courts that tried and murdered, under 
the forms of law, so many of the patriots of Ireland. 

Late in the year 1797 Curran' s services as patriot- 
advocate were enlisted in behalf of Peter Finnerty, 
editor of The Post, who was charged with libeling 
the government in the person of the viceroy. The 
alleged libel was in reality but a plain statement of 
the truth relative to the trial and infamous execution 
of William Orr. This unfortunate man had been tried 
on the charge of high treason, had been defended by 



142 THE IRISH ORATORS 






Curran, found guilty and executed. This trial and 
execution probably has no parallel in perfidy in Irish 
history. Orr's life, previous to his arrest, had com- 
manded the profound respect and affection of all who 
knew him. He was convicted, as usual, on the un- 
corroborated word of a wretched informer. The jury 
had deliberated throughout the night when the au- 
thorities, fearing a failure of their methods of in- 
timidation, introduced liquor into the jury room and 
the death verdict was coaxed from drunken men. 
Upon regaining the use of their faculties and learn- 
ing what they had done the miserable jurors recom- 
mended mercy, manfully setting forth in their petition 
the shameful facts. It was to no avail. The verdict 
of the inebriates, based upon the unsupported word 
of a purchased informer, was carried out and the name 
of William Orr lengthened the list of the Irish mar- 
tyrs. He died protesting his innocence. These facts 
were set forth by Finnerty through the columns of 
his paper in a severe remonstrance to the viceroy of 
Ireland — and this was called "libel" by the govern- 
ment. Finnerty was accordingly summoned to trial. 
Although Curran entered the court room at the be- 
ginning of the Finnerty trial with no idea of partici- 
pating and without preparation, his speech in defense 
of the editor was spirited and brilliantly audacious. 
Realizing that the jury had been picked by the prose- 
cution, he boldly proclaimed his knowledge to the jury 
in the very beginning. "You know and we know," 
he said, "upon what occasion you are come, and by 
whom you have been chosen; you are come to try 
an accusation professedly brought forward by the 
state, chosen by a sheriff who is appointed by our 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 143 

accuser." Without giving the prosecution an oppor- 
tunity to recover from the effect of the startling but 
true accusation, he plunged impetuously into a defense 
of the article deemed libelous and pronounced it true 
in all its parts. In defending the liberty of the press 
he did not hesitate to charge that the oppressors of 
Ireland were bent upon the suppression of a free press 
in Ireland with "the only printer in Ireland who dares 
to speak for the people in the dock/' Thus challeng- 
ing the right of the jury so selected to act, making 
the so-called libel of his client his own and personally 
vouching for its truth, he turned indignantly upon the 
jurors with the scornful challenge: 

"Upright and honest jurors, find a civil and obliging 
yerdict against the printer. And when you have done 
so march through the ranks of your fellow citizens to 
your own homes, and bear their looks as you pass along ; 
retire to the bosoms of your families and your children, 
and when you are presiding over the morality of the par- 
ental board, tell those infants who are to be the future 
men of Ireland the history of this day. Form their young 
minds by your precepts, and confirm those precepts by 
your example ; teach them how discreetly allegiance may 
be perjured on the table, or loyalty be forsworn in the 
jury box ; and when you have done so, tell them the story 
of Orr ; tell them of his captivity, of his children, of his 
crime, of his hopes and disappointments, of his courage 
and of his death ; and when you find your little hearers 
hanging upon your lips, when you see their young eyes 
overflow with sympathy and sorrow and their young 
hearts bursting with the pangs of anticipated orphanage, 
tell them that you had the boldness and the justice to 
stigmatize the monster who had dared to publish the 
transaction." 

Declaring that the government proposed that an 



144 THE IRISH ORATORS 






IrisH jury should say to the world in their verdict 
that the government of Ireland was wise and merci- 
ful and the people prosperous and happy, he indig- 
nantly demanded: 

"Merciful God, what is the state of Ireland, and where 
will you find the wretched inhabitant of this land? You 
will find him perhaps in gaol, the only place of security, 
I had almost said of ordinary habitation; you may see 
him flying by the conflagration of his dwelling; or you 
may find his bones bleaching on the green fields of the 
country; or he may be found tossing upon the surface 
of the ocean, and mingling his groans with those tem- 
pests, less savage than his persecutors, that drift him to 
a returnless distance from his family and his home. And 
yet, with these facts ringing in the ears and staring in 
the faces of the prosecutors, you are called upon to say 
on your oaths that these facts do not exist. You are 
called upon in defiance of shame, of truth, of honor, to 
deny the suffering under which you groan, and to flatter 
the persecution that tramples you under foot." 

Thus, in the Finnerty case, Curran lost sight of his 
client in his country; or rather, he plead for his coun- 
try through his client. Thus through the exaltation 
of his genius he raised the private issue to a public 
cause, and made the cowardly attempt of the oppressor 
to suppress an humble expose of the wretched mis- 
government of Ireland a peg on which to hang an 
excoriation of such brilliancy as to attract the atten- 
tion of the world and hold it for a century. The ver- 
dict was against Finnerty, as was prearranged, but the 
viceroy would gladly have exchanged an unfavorable 
verdict for the suppression of Curran's tremendous 
indictment. 

This takes us up to the fateful year of '98, the most 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 145 

eventful in the career of Cur ran, and perhaps the most 
tragic in the history of Ireland. In January of that 
year the notorious state trials commenced in the at- 
tempt to convict Patrick Finney and fifteen others on 
a charge of treason and upon the uncorroborated evi- 
dence of a moral monster named James O'Brien. 
Confronted, as usual, with a hostile jury, Cur ran 
realized that the lives of his clients depended upon 
the demolishment of the testimony of the informer. 
His cross-examination of O'Brien was a classic. As- 
suming an attitude of respect and admiration, he threw 
the witness off his guard, won his confidence and step 
by step persuaded him through his admissions and 
boasting to expose his hidden baseness to the jury. 
It was upon the ineffable moral turpitude of the pros- 
ecuting witness that the advocate based his defense. 
His denunciation of this informer was the most fe- 
rocious, perhaps, that ever fell from his lips : 

"Have you any doubt," he asked, "that it is the object 
of O'Brien to take down the prisoner for the reward 
that follows ? Have you not seen with what more than 
instinctive keenness this bloodhound has pursued his vic- 
tim? How he has kept him in view from place to place 
until he hunts him through the avenues of the court, 
to where the unhappy man stands now, hopeless of all 
succor save that which your verdict shall afford ? I have 
heard of assassination by sword, by pistol and by dag- 
ger, but here is a wretch who would dip the evangelists 
in blood. If he thinks he has not sworn his victim to 
death, he is ready to swear without mercy and without 
end ; but oh, do not, I conjure you, suffer him to take 
an oath ; the arm of the murderer should not pollute the 
purity of the gospel; and if he will swear, let it be on 
the knife, the proper symbol of his profession." 



146 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Tradition has it that the effect of Curran' s philippic 
upon spectators, the court and its miserable object 
was tremendous. As he analyzed the evidence, re- 
vealing the perjury in every line, he returned time and 
again to the assault until O'Brien, cowering in his seat, 
was in deadly fear of his life. Even the packed jury 
did not have the temerity to authorize a murder on 
the evidence of an informer who was as stupid as he 
was infamous, and Finney was promptly acquitted. 
The informer became the object of general detesta- 
tion, and when a little later he was convicted of mur- 
der his execution was accompanied by horrible shouts 
and jeers of exultation. 

After the rising of '98, in which as many as fifty 
thousand people lost their lives, the fury and fear of 
the alien rulers led to a veritable reign of terror in 
the courts, and into the maelstrom of passion Cur ran 
was instantly plunged. The leaders of the rising who 
survived were foredoomed to execution through 
packed juries and purchased testimony. It was with 
a clear comprehension of the futility of his efforts 
that Curran stepped forward to bear the brunt of the 
battle in defense of the patriots. The intimidation 
of Castle and court, the manufacture of evidence, the 
recognition of the informer, the packing of juries — 
all this was known to him. With Grattan and Plunk- 
ett hostile to the revolutionists and with O'Connell 
still a student and in the Kerry hills, John Philpot 
Curran became the man of the hour. 

The first victims to be summoned to their certain 
death were Henry and John Sheares, both highly re- 
spected members of the Dublin bar. The scene in the 
court room was dramatic, for the defendants battling 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 147 

for their lives were not ordinary culprits but gentle- 
men of social and professional brilliance. All classes 
were represented among the fascinated spectators. 
The examination of witnesses had proceeded through- 
out the day, the evidence against the accused accumu- 
lating hour by hour, until the shades of evening came 
and the flickering candlelight cast its grotesque shad- 
ows on the drawn tense faces of the people. The par- 
ticipants in this dramatic scene had not been permitted 
one moment's relaxation. It was midnight when Cur- 
ran, weary from the protracted struggle, rose to make 
his closing plea for the two defendants. There was 
a movement of expectation in the gallery where the 
children of poverty, some of whom had figured se- 
cretly in the insurrection, leaned forward to hear. 

"My lords," Curran began, "before I address you or 
the jury I would wish to make one preliminary observa- 
tion. It may be an observation only — it may be a re- 
quest. For myself, I am indifferent; but I feel I am 
now unequal to the duty — I am sinking under the weight 
of it. We all know the character of the jury: the in- 
terval of their separation must be short, if it should be 
deemed necessary to separate them. I protest I have 
sunk under this trial. If I must go on, the court must 
bear with me ; the jury may also bear with me ; and I 
will go on until I sink ; but sitting for sixteen hours, with 
only twenty minutes interval in these times, I should hope 
it would not be thought an obtrusive request to ask for 
a few hours interval for repose." 

The orator paused and waited — but not for long. 
The Castle was hungry for its prey. The gallows 
were ready — why wait? The attorney-general refused 
to agree on the ground that a great concession had 



148 THE IRISH ORATORS 

already been shown the defense. Pulling himself to- 
gether, fired by the unfairness of the remark, Cur ran 
began with a melancholy smile : 

"Gentlemen of the jury, it seems that much has been 
conceded to us. God help us. I do not know what has 
been conceded to me — if so insignificant a person may 
have extorted that remark. Perhaps it is a concession 
that I am allowed to rise in such a state of mind and 
body, of collapse and deprivation, as to feel but a little 
spark of indignation raised by the remark that much has 
been conceded to the counsel for the defense. Almighty 
and merciful God, who lookest down upon us, what are 
the times to which we are reserved, when we are told 
that much has been conceded to prisoners who are put 
upon their trial at a moment like this — that public con- 
venience can not spare a respite of a few hours to those 
who are accused for their lives ; and that much has been 
conceded to the poor advocate almost exhausted in the 
poor remark which he has endeavored to make upon it." 

Summoning all the latent powers within him, he 
then launched forth into one of the most moving and 
eloquent of his speeches at the bar, albeit the evidence 
was all against him. Pie could only appeal to the 
heart of a jury that had been selected with the sanc- 
tion of the prosecution, but he appealed to them with 
all the fervor of his nature, and plead with them not 
to encourage the appetite for blood already manifest 
in the hounds of the viceroy: and he could denounce 
the inevitable informer — this time because of his in- 
fidelity and his consequent disregard for an oath. At 
times he seemed upon the verge of a collapse. His 
voice sank almost to a whisper. His step faltered. 
Then once more his spirit spurred to mighty action 
the splendid genius, and the crowd in the court room 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 149 

was momentarily swayed by an eloquence that was 
scarcely less than superhuman. But all in vain. The 
jury retired in the morning, found the brothers guilty, 
and both were condemned. 

Five days went by and Curran was again in court 
defending John McCann against the evidence of the 
wretched informer, Thomas Reynolds, to whom the 
orator has given an immortality of infamy. The bril- 
liancy and startling audacity of Curran's excoriation 
of Reynolds, who appears to have been a special fa- 
vorite of the Castle, inspired the government to order 
the suppression of the orator's speech. McCann was 
convicted. Three days later Curran was again in court 
pleading for the life of William Byrne. The slimy 
Reynolds again figured as the prosecuting witness, and 
again the government prevented the publication of 
Curran's speech. But when, three days afterward, 
Curran appeared in defense of Oliver Bond, the Cas- 
tle found that suppression had intensified the interest 
of the public in Curran's speeches. It was the evi- 
dent intention at this time to frighten the advocate 
into a less obnoxious course of argument. Time and 
again in the course of his speech he was interrupted 
by men stationed in the court room for the purpose. 
Not content with this outrage, the hirelings of the 
Castle resorted to its armed men, who stood about in 
threatening attitude, staring at the speaker. Finally 
there was a rattling of musketry and an ominous move- 
ment of the soldiers in protest against some phase of 
the speech. Without a moment's hesitation Curran 
paused, and walking directly upon the uniformed ruf- 
fians, he looked them squarely and sternly in the eye, 
shook his clenched fist in their faces, and electrified 



ISO ITHE IRISH ORATORS 

every decent man in the room with the thrilling ex- 
clamation: "You may assassinate, you shall not in- 
timidate me." Just what the expression was that thus 
aroused the protest of the uniformed scullions of the 
Castle the record does not show; but in view of the 
honors reserved for Reynolds by the English govern- 
ment, it may have been the following, indicative of 
the manner in which Cur ran threw himself into the 
defense of the men of '98 : 

"Are you prepared," he asked, "in a case of life and 
death, of honor and of infamy, to credit a vile informer, 
the perjurer of a hundred oaths — a wretch whom honor, 
pride or religion could not bind? The forsaken prosti- 
tute of every vice calls upon you with one breath to blast 
the memory of the dead and to blight the character of 
the living. Do you think Reynolds to be a villain? It 
is true he dresses like a gentleman ; and the confident 
expression of his countenance and the dry tones of his 
voice savor strong of growing authority. He measures 
his value by the coffins of his victims; and, in the field 
of evidence, appreciates his fame as the Indian warrior 
does his fight — by the number of scalps with which he 
can swell his triumphs. He has promised and betrayed 
— he has sworn and forsworn ; and whether his soul goes 
to heaven or to hell he seems altogether indifferent, as 
he tells you that he has established an interest in both." 

In common with all the other victims of the terror- 
ism of '98, Bond was convicted, but died of apoplexy 
before the hangman could do his work. 

Thus was the time of Cur ran passed during the 
whole of that melancholy year. Among all the great 
lawyers of the Dublin bar he stood out, distinct and 
alone, looming above the rest like a mountain among 
the foothills, the beloved and admired patriot pleader 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 1S1 

of the heroes. During these trials his life was in con- 
stant danger. A government that would countenance 
a Reynolds would not be above the employment of 
an assassin; and the Bonds and McCanns were of but 
little consequence to the Castle compared to the colossal 
genius whose eloquence constitutes the most damning 
indictment of the time. Almost daily threatened with 
violence by anonymous letters handed him on his way 
to court, his footsteps dogged by hired ruffians, his 
reputation assailed by the character assassins of the 
Castle, he persevered in his patriotic course until the 
government seriously considered proceedings against 
him in the courts — which was another way of plan- 
ning his assassination. Fortunately, however, the 
marvelous eloquence and commanding genius of Cur- 
ran lifted his renown far beyond the little green isle, 
and his persecution would have reacted fatally upon 
the Castle, and the plan was abandoned. The effect 
of these trials upon Curran, however, was extremely 
depressing. The fortunes of his country were at so 
low an ebb that he contemplated leaving it forever. 
His health had suffered with his spirits and he was 
mentally exhausted. Broken, disheartened and inef- 
fably sad, he went over to England for rest. With 
the consummation of the union, a little later, he aban- 
doned all hope for his native isle and never ceased to 
regret the passing of the Volunteers, whose services 
he always thought might have prevented the destruc- 
tion of the parliament. But the memories of Erin, 
both grave and gay, beckoned him back home; and 
well it was, for his genius had yet other work to do 
in Ireland. 

It is significant of Curran's claim upon the lasting 



152 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



gratitude and affect ion of his race that his brilliant ad- 
vocacy should have been exerted in behalf of the chil- 
dren of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, against the property 
of whom the government had the temerity to move 
after the death of their heroic father, and that Cur- 
ran persisted until the end in a desperate effort to 
save Wolfe Tone. Illegally court-martialed and sen- 
tenced to die the most ignominious of deaths, with 
the government unrelenting in its demand for blood, 
and the people stunned into apathy by the apparent 
hopelessness of the situation, it was Curran who 
fought and fought almost alone until the end. His 
one hope was that he might prevail upon the Court 
of King's Bench to assert its jurisdiction and delay 
thereby the execution of the sentence; that in the 
meanwhile France might threaten reprisals in the event 
of Tone's death ; and that the case might be lifted from 
the sordid criminal status it held to one of political 
significance. The day dawned for the execution. 
Early in the morning Curran appeared in the court 
room leading the aged father of the condemned. 
Lord Kilwarden, one of the purest of Irish jurists 
upon the bench, promptly issued a habeas corpus 
order on the motion of the advocate, who laid stress 
upon the fact that the uniform of a French offi- 
cer, which Tone wore, together with the fact that 
he held no commission from his majesty, protected 
him from death upon the scaffold. The utter con- 
tempt of the orders of the court on the part of the 
military authorities aroused the ire of Kilwarden, who 
for the second time ordered the sheriff to take the 
body of Tone into custody and to show the order of 
the court to General Craig. The official hurried to 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 153 

the performance of his duty while the justice, the 
father and Curran anxiously awaited his return. At 
length the sheriff reported that he had again been pos- 
itively refused admittance to the barracks, but had been 
informed that the prisoner had wounded himself with 
a knife. This closes the story. Tone lingered several 
days and died in prison. 

After the destruction of the legislative independence 
of his country Curran made no concealment of his 
chagrin, but he declined to enter into any organized 
effort to bring about the repeal of the union. The 
period of the state trials was for the most part over, 
but the services of a patriot-advocate to plead the cause 
of Ireland in the courts was none the less needed. The 
next three years found him engaged in two celebrated 
suits in which he was enabled to plead the cause of 
Ireland through that of his clients. 

The first of these, in 1802, was the civil suit of 
John Hervey against Charles Henry Sirr, the town 
marshal of Dublin, for false imprisonment. Curran's 
masterful argument in behalf of the plaintiff, expos- 
ing the tyranny of English misrule in Ireland, was 
addressed directly to the English people, and not with- 
out effect.. The case of Hervey was a peculiarly ag- 
gravated one. He had been persistently persecuted by 
some of the petty officials who were pandering to the 
Castle and this systematic persecution, extending over 
a long period, had culminated in his incarceration with- 
out even the semblance of a legitimate excuse. The 
jury entered into the spirit of the advocate and brought 
in a verdict which, while small, was sufficient to serve 
the purpose Curran had in view. The startling reve- 
lations of the case made a profound impression across 



154 THE IRISH ORATORS 

the channel. Even the Edinburg Review, in a critical 
study of Cur ran' s speeches in 1808, declared that "the 
facts stated in this (Curran's) speech are such as can 
not be perused without the utmost horror and the most 
lively indignation; and are calculated indeed to give 
such an impression of the outrageous abuses that were 
then familiar in that unhappy country that we should 
hesitate about the propriety of giving any further no- 
toriety to the accusation if we had not seen, from 
the abstract of the record subjoined to the speech, that 
it received the sanction of the jury who, in spite of 
the high place and the terrible influence of the defend- 
ant, yet found a verdict of damages for the plaintiff." 

A little later, in the celebrated cause of the King vs. 
Justice Johnson, Curran had another opportunity to 
drive home to the English people the injustices habitu- 
ally practised by their representatives upon the Irish 
race. Incidental to the insurrection of 1803, Justice 
Johnson wrote a letter condemnatory of the Irish gov- 
ernment, which was published in England and the 
amazing attempt was made, through a forced inter- 
pretation of the new act of parliament, to drag the 
writer from his home and friends for trial in Eng- 
land. This unutterable outrage was stubbornly and 
brilliantly contested by Curran in one of the most mas- 
terful of his orations. 

This was the last great national cause in which he 
participated and soon afterward, on the death of Pitt 
and the inception into power of the Whigs, with whom 
he had affiliated with Grattan, he was appointed mas- 
ter of the rolls — and his brilliant public career was 
over. 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 155 

IV 

The years intervening between Curran's appoint- 
ment and his death were marked by a gradual decline 
of power. More and more he began to drift, seek- 
ing diversion in society, reserving his brilliancy for 
the dinner table, and this brings us to another Curran 
■ — the clever wit, the boon companion. 

During the whole of his life Curran was a social 
genius. In early life he had been one of the moving 
spirits of the celebrated order of Saint Patrick, or 
"Monks of the Screw"— a society consisting of men 
of high order of intellect, conceived in a spirit of con- 
viviality. These brilliant men met every Saturday 
evening during the law term in Saint Kevin Street, 
Dublin, and frequently at Curran's country home, 
which he called The Priory. The rooms in Dublin 
were furnished in a monkish fashion and the mem- 
bers appeared in the habit of the order, a black tabinet 
domino. Here met and mingled such men as Curran, 
Lord Avonmore, one of the finest scholars of his day; 
the Marquis of Townsend ; Lord Mornington, the com- 
poser; Grattan and Henry Flood, the eloquent Hussey 
Burgh and the lamented Kilwarden— the very full 
flower of Irish genius. 

During the greatef part of Curran's life his beau- 
tiful home, The Priory, was a Mecca for the most 
brilliant men of the times. It was the special delight 
of the orator to gather about his board the most prom- 
ising of the young men of the country. Of his life 
here we have some fascinating pictures from the rec- 
ollections of Charles Phillips, the orator, who was a 



156 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



frequent guest. "Never shall I forget my sensations 
when I first caught glimpse of the little man through 
the vista of the avenue," he writes. "There he was, 
as a thousand times afterward I saw him, in a dress 
which you would have imagined he had borrowed from 
his tipstaff — his hands on his sides, his face almost 
parallel with the horizon — his under lip protruded." 
The heart of Curran has been shown us through these 
recollections, and we are permitted to see him in all 
his moods — for he was a man of moods and passed 
from the very exaltation of happiness to the most dis- 
mal melancholy within an hour. It was not unusual 
for him, after having dazzled a brilliant company far 
into the night with his wit and eloquence, to wander 
out alone, or with a single companion, into the ex- 
quisite gardens of The Priory, where he would ramble 
until dawn, lost in the most gloomy reflections. Thus 
in his life, as in his speeches, tears and laughter were 
close together. While visiting the cottage of Robert 
Burns and observing a drunken man, he burst into 
tears. We have a picture of him on board a packet 
reading the pathetic story of Clarissa Harlowe with 
the tears streaming down his cheeks. He was never 
able to read The Sorrows of Werther with dry eyes. 
His social triumphs, however, were not confined 
to Dublin, for he was a frequent visitor to Lon- 
don, where the most exclusive and brilliant houses 
were honored by his presence, and here he came 
into contact with the great minds of the literary, 
professional and political worlds. It was at Hol- 
land House that Lord Byron first met him. "He 
beats everybody," declared the poet. "His imag- 
ination is beyond the human and his humor perfect. 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 157 

He has fifty faces and twice as many voices when he 
mimics." And on another occasion Byron wrote: 
"The riches of his Irish imagination were exhaustless. 
I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have 
ever written, though I saw him seldom." Apropos 
of the "fifty faces," Lawrence, the artist, after seeing 
him in one of his rare moments of animation, ex- 
claimed : "I have never painted your portrait at all." 
We have it from Doctor Birkbeck, who roomed with 
him in Paris for five weeks, that during that time 
there were not five consecutive minutes within which 
Curran could not make them both laugh and cry. 
Home Tooke, who frequently had an opportunity to 
compare Curran with Richard Brinsley Sheridan,^ de- 
scribed them. "Sheridan's wit was like steel," he 
wrote, "highly polished and sharpened for display and 
use, while Curran's was a mine of virgin gold, inces- 
santly crumbling away from its own richness." This 
suggests Byron's comparison of Curran with Lord 
Erskine, the only forensic orator in the British Isles 
who rose to the dignity of a rival : 

"There also were two wits by acclamation, 
Longbow from Ireland, Strongbow from the Tweed, 
Both lawyers, and both men of education ; 
But Strongbow's wit was of more polished breed : 
Longbow was richer in imagination, 
As beautiful and bounding as a steed, 
But sometimes stumbling over a potato, 
While Strongbow's best things might have come from 
Cato. 

"Strongbow was like a new-tuned harpsichord, 
But Longbow wild as an yEolian harp, 
With which the winds of heaven can claim accord, 
And make a music either flat or sharp, 



158 JHE IRISH ORATORS 

Of Strongbow's talk you would not change a word : 
At Longbow's phrases you might sometimes carp. 
Both wits — one born so, and the other bred, 
His by the heart — his rival by the head." 

Apropos of the comparison between Curran and Er- 
skine, an interesting story is told of their meeting at 
a dinner at Carlton House, London. The royal host 
having turned the conversation to the profession of 
his brilliant guests, Lord Erskine said: "No man in 
the land need be ashamed to belong to the legal pro- 
fession. For my part, of a noble family myself, I 
feel no degradation in practising it — it has added not 
only to my wealth, but to my dignity." Curran main- 
tained a modest silence until the host, observing it, 
asked for his opinion. "Lord Erskine," he replied, 
"has so eloquently described all the advantages to be 
derived from his profession that I hardly thought my 
opinion worth adding. But perhaps it is — perhaps I 
am a better practical instance of its advantages than 
his lordship. He was ennobled by birth before he 
came to it, but it has" — with a bow to the host — "in 
my person raised the son of a peasant to the table of 
his prince." 

It seems that Curran did not always fall down and 
worship all the English celebrities with whom he came 
in contact. He admired Sheridan, and looked upon 
Charles James Fox with something akin to awe. Of 
Doctor Johnson he entertained but a poor opinion. 
"Sir," he once said, "he was intolerant — an intolerable 
dogmatist — in learning, a pedant — in religion, a bigot 
■ — in manners, a savage — and in politics, a slave." 
Though very fond of Byron, he was disgusted with 
the poet's bathetic lines to his wife. "Here is a man," 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 159 

he said, "who first weeps over his wife and then dries 
his eyes on the public." 

Toward the close of his life he entertained an am- 
bition for a seat in the British house of commons, 
and in 1812 he stood for Newry, but after six days 
in the field he retired from the contest. The following 
year his health began to fail rapidly and he resigned 
his position and went over to Paris in the hope of 
reviving his spirits. A large part of the next three 
years were spent in London or Paris, and he spoke 
frequently at public dinners, but the old brilliancy 
was rapidly failing. While dining at the table of 
Tom Moore, in the spring of 1817, he suffered a 
slight stroke. He lingered through the summer, but 
on October fourteenth his eloquent tongue was forever 
silent. The funeral was private. Daniel O'Connell 
canceled an engagement on the continent to pay his 
respects along with Charles Phillips, the orator; Tom 
Moore, the poet, and Finnerty, the publisher, whose 
name has been saved from oblivion by the genius of 
the advocate who plead his cause. 

V 

The Irish race has produced greater statesmen, more 
profound lawyers, and possibly more ardent patriots, 
but it has not given to the world a greater orator than 
John Philpot Curran. The verdict of his contempo- 
raries is overwhelming on that point. His published 
speeches, unsatisfactorily reported and never revised, 
are corroborative evidence of his marvelous eloquence. 
It is but fair to his fame to say that he never gave 
his consent to the publication of his orations, and that 
after their publication he offered two thousand five 



160 THE IRISH ORATORS 

hundred dollars for their suppression. No doubt a re- 
vision would have corrected many of the faults now 
ascribed to them. Some of these faults were due to 
the limitations of the reporter, and some errors in 
taste no doubt grew out of the trying circumstances 
under which they were delivered. They were not 
scholastic lectures laboriously written in the calm se- 
clusion of the closet to please fastidious ears, but were 
necessarily extemporaneous effusions spoken in the 
white heat of battle in which the lives of men were 
at stake. 

It is significant that whatever position he attained 
among his contemporaries was not due to physical at- 
tractions. He could not awe as Chatham could by his 
mere presence. On the contrary, he was a man of 
insignificant physical proportions, short and with the 
form of a youth, and naturally ungraceful. His face 
was without beauty. His complexion was rather 
muddy. Only his dark glistening eyes redeemed his 
countenance from the commonplace, and this only 
when fired by the genius within him. His voice was 
not strong, but his modulation and use of it was skil- 
ful, and was particularly effective in passages of 
pathos. 

It is probable that his peculiar genius was derived 
from his intimate understanding of the heart of his 
people. He knew how to play upon their emotions 
because he had felt them. He knew how to utilize 
their passions and prejudices because he had them. 
His youthful days beneath the peasant's roof had 
taught him human nature. Thus, feeling as he spoke, 
he carried his hearers with him by his absolute sin- 
cerity — the highest attribute of eloquence. 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 161. 

He had, in addition to his natural gifts of nature, 
acquired a vocabulary unsurpassed by any orator who 
has spoken the English tongue ; and usually, unless car- 
ried away by the fervor of the moment, he selected his 
words with fine discrimination. It was this extensive 
vocabulary that made it possible for him to balance 
his sentences so musically. 

Many of his speeches were prepared while walking 
the streets of Dublin, or riding back and forth between 
the capital and his home at The Priory. It is said that 
most exquisite passages were conceived while alone in 
his library with his beloved violoncello. It is generally 
thought that his masterpiece was his defense of 
Rowan, the plan for which, covering but a few lines, 
and jotted down roughly on a piece of paper, follows : 

"To arms — reform — Catholic emancipation — conven- 
tion — now unlawful — consequences of conviction — trials 
be fore revolution — drowned — Lambert — Muir — charac- 
ter of R — furnace &c — Rebellion smothered stalks — re- 
deeming spirit." 

In an eloquent passage in his speech for Hervey he 
seems to be giving an illustration of his own art when 
he says : 

"When you endeavor to convey an idea of a great num- 
ber of barbarians practising a great variety of cruelties 
upon an incalculable multitude of sufferers, nothing de- 
fined or specific finds its way to the heart; nor is any 
sentiment excited save that of a general erratic commis- 
eration. If, for instance, you wish to convey to the mind 
of an English matron the horror of that direful period 
when in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever to be 
lamented Abercromby, our poor people were surrendered 



162 THE IRISH ORATORS 

to the licentious brutality of the soldiery by the authority 
of the state, you would vainly endeavor to give her a 
general picture of lust, and rapine, and murder and con- 
flagration. By endeavoring to comprehend everything, 
you would convey nothing. When the father of poetry 
wishes to convey the movements of contending armies 
and an embattled field, he exemplifies only, he does not 
describe — he does not venture to describe the perplexed 
and promiscuous conflicts of adverse hosts, but by the 
acts and fates of a few individuals he conveys a notion 
of the vicissitudes of the fight and the fortunes of the 
day. So should your story to her keep clear of gener- 
alities ; instead of exhibiting the picture of an entire prov- 
ince, select a single object, and even in that single object, 
do not release the imagination of your hearer to the task 
by giving more than an outline. Take a cottage — place 
the affrighted mother by her orphaned daughters at the 
door, the paleness of death in her face, and more than 
its agonies in her heart — her aching heart, her anxious 
ears struggling through the mists of the closing day to 
catch the approaches of desolation and dishonor. The 
ruffian gang arrives — the feast of plunder begins — the 
cup of madness kindles in its circulation — the wandering 
glances of the ravisher become concentrated upon the 
shrinking victim; you need not dilate — you need not ex- 
patiate — the unpolluted mother to whom you tell the story 
of horror beseeches you not to proceed ; she presses her 
child to her arms and bathes it in her tears ; her fancy 
catches more than an angel's tongue could describe ; in 
a single view she takes in the whole miserable succession 
of force, of profanation, of despair,, of death. So it is 
in the question before us. If any man shall hear of this 
day's proceedings he can not be so foolish as to suppose 
that we have been confined to a single character like those 
now brought before you." 

There are few things finer in the language than his 
tribute to the Volunteers of Ireland in his defense of 
Rowan, and few things that approach the superb 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 163 

passage in the same speech, beginning with the words, 
"I speak in the spirit of the British law." There has 
probably never been an orator so capable of affecting 
pathos. Is there any wonder that he brought tears to 
the eyes of the callous in his touching description of 
the fate of Orr in Jiis defense of Finnerty : 



"Let me suppose that you had known the charge on 
which Mr. Orr was apprehended — the charge of abjur- 
ing that bigotry which had torn and disgraced his coun- 
try, of pledging himself to restore the people of his 
country to their place in the constitution, and of bind- 
ing himself never to be the betrayer of his fellow labor- 
ers in that enterprise ; that you had seen him upon that 
charge removed from his industry and confined in a gaol ; 
that through the long and lingering process of twelve 
tedious months you had seen him confined in a dungeon, 
shut out from the common use of air and of his limbs; 
that day after day you had remarked the unhappy cap- 
tive, cheered by no sound but the cries of his family, 
or the clanking of his chains; that you had seen him at 
last brought to his trial; that you had seen the vile and 
perjured informer deposing against his life; that you 
had seen the tired and worn and terrified jury give in 
a verdict of death; that you had seen the same jury, 
when their returning sobriety had brought back their 
conscience, prostrate themselves before the humanity of 
the bench and pray that the mercy of the crown might 
save their characters from -the approach of an involun- 
tary crime, and their consciences from the torture of 
eternal self-condemnation, and their souls from the in- 
delible stain of innocent blood. Let me suppose that you 
had seen the respite given, and that contrite and honest 
recommendation transmitted to that seat where mercy 
was supposed to dwell ; that new and before unheard of 
crimes had been discovered against the informer; that 
the royal mercy seems to relent, and that a new respite 
is sent to the prisoner ; that time is taken, as the learned. 



164 THE IRISH ORATORS 

counsel for the crown has stated it, to see whether mercy 
could be extended or not ; that, after that period of lin- 
gering deliberation passed, a third respite is transmitted; 
that the unhappy captive himself feels the cheering hope 
of being restored to a family that he adored, to a char- 
acter that he had never stained, and to a country that 
he had ever loved ; that you had seen his wife and chil- 
dren upon their knees, giving those tears to gratitude 
which their locked and frozen hearts could not give to 
despair, and imploring the blessings of eternal providence 
upon his head, who had graciously spared the father and 
restored him to his children ; that you had seen the olive 
branch sent into the little ark, but no sign that the waters 
had subsided. 

" 'Alas, nor wife, nor children more shall he behold, 

Nor friends, nor sacred home/ 

"No seraph mercy unbars his dungeon and leads him 
forth to life and light ; but the minister of death hurries 
him to the scenes of suffering and shame ; where, un- 
moved by the hostile array of artillery and armed men 
collected together, to secure, or to insult, or to disturb 
him, he dies with a solemn declaration of his innocence, 
and utters his last breath in a prayer for the liberty of 
his country." 

The second illustration of Curran's power with 
pathos will be taken from his speech in the case of the 
King vs. Johnson, in which, after a long period of 
misunderstanding, he appealed so powerfully to the 
heart of Justice Avonmore upon the bench that tears 
rolled down the jurist's cheeks and a reconciliation 
was effected. There is a felicity of expression and a 
pensive melancholy in the appeal to the past that makes 
this one of the most beautiful passages to be found in 
Curran : 

"But I cherish, too, the consolatory hope that I shall 
be able to tell them that I had an old and valued friend, 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 165 

whom I would put above all the sweepings of their hall, 
who was of a different opinion ; who had derived his ideas 
of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and 
of Rome; who had fed the youthful vigor of his studi- 
ous mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest 
philosophers and statesmen ; and who had refined the the- 
ory into the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral in- 
stinct by contemplating the practise of their most illus- 
trious examples; by dwelling on the sweet-souled piety 
of Cimon ; on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates ; 
on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas ; 
on the pure austerity of Fabricius. I would add that if 
he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment; 
that his hesitation was but as the passing cloud that 
floats across the morning sun and hides it from the view, 
and does so for a moment hide it by involving the spec- 
tator without even approaching the face of the luminary : 
and this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and ten- 
derest recollections of my life, from the remembrance of 
those Attic nights which we have spent with those admired 
and respected and beloved companions who have gone 
before us; over whose ashes the most precious tears of 
Ireland have been shed: yes, my lord, I see you do not 
forget them ; I see their sacred forms passing in sad re- 
view before your memory; I see your pained and soft- 
ened fancy recalling those happy meetings, when the 
innocent enjoyment of social mirth expanded into the no- 
bler warmth of social virtue ; and the horizon of the 
board became enlarged into the horizon of man ; when 
the swelling heart conceived and communicated the pure 
and generous purpose; when my slenderer and younger 
taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured 
and redundant light of yours. Yes, my lord, we can 
remember those nights without any regret than that they 
can never more return, for 

We spent them not in toys, nor lust, nor wine, 

But search of deep philosophy, 

Wit, eloquence and poesy, 
Arts which I loved, for they, my lord, were thine/ " 



166 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Sometimes Curran's humor was not taken kindly by 
the victim of his smile, as in the case of Doctor Duige- 
nan, who fell counter to the orator in a debate on the 
Catholic emancipation bill and took the ridicule so se- 
riously as to express a ferocious desire to kill the 
humorist. The doctor, in a bigoted speech, had mixed 
his history in a maudlin way, and denounced every- 
body, including Curran, whom he dubbed the "bottle 
holder of his party's chief." In his denunciation of 
members he had mispronounced some of their names, 
and Curran replied : 

"Sure I am that if I had been the bottle holder the 
learned doctor would have had less reason to complain 
of me than my right honorable friend; for him I should 
have left perfectly sober, whilst it would very clearly 
appear that, with respect to the learned doctor, the bot- 
tle would not only have been managed fairly but gen- 
erously; and if in furnishing him with liquor I had not 
furnished him with argument, I had at least furnished 
him with a good excuse for wanting it ; with the best ex- 
cuse for the confusion of history, and divinity, and civil 
law, and canon law — that rollicking mixture of politics 
and theology and antiquity with which he has over- 
whelmed the debate; for the havoc and carnage he has 
made of the population of the last age, and the fury 
with which he seems determined to exterminate and even 
to devour the population of this ; and which urged him, 
after tearing and gnawing the character of the Catholics, 
to spend the last efforts of his rage with the most unre- 
lenting ferocity in actually gnawing their names." 

As a rule, however, Curran found the situation such 
as to call for a far more pointed denunciation of the 
characters he attacked than could be conveyed by sar- 
casm and humor. The bitterness of his assaults upon 



JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN 167 

the paid informers of the Castle sometimes led him 
into extreme expressions that have been much criti- 
cized as in bad taste. An illustration may be given in 
his description of the informer as one "who had been 
buried a man and left until his heart had time to fester 
and dissolve and then dug up — a witness." The use 
of such intemperate expressions can be traced to the 
extreme provocations of the times. 

All in all, Curran is probably the greatest genius 
among the Irish orators. Although his fame was not 
achieved in addressing popular assemblies, the memory 
of his patriotic services is cherished by the most hum- 
ble of the Irish peasants. 

Poetry and passion — the coarse and the subtle — pa- 
thos and humor — and the music of words — these 
characterize and have immortalized the eloquence of 
John Philpot Curran. 



IV 

LORD PLUNKETT 

The Conspiracy of Castlereagh and Pitt; the Degradation of the 
Irish Parliament; the Fight Against the Con- 
summation of the Union 

THE destruction of the legislative independence 
of Ireland and the consummation of the union 
by fair means or foul had been the ambition of more 
than one English statesman from the days of Crom- 
well, but the possibility of accomplishing the deed 
without serious protest from the Irish parliament or 
the people had never seemed so certain as when Pitt 
selected Castlereagh as the master of ceremonies. 
Henry Flood, whose lash of invective had fallen with 
such stinging effect upon the enemies of his country, 
had passed from the stage; and Henry Grattan, dis- 
gusted and nauseated by the stench of parliamentary 
corruption, had voluntarily retired from the scene. 
The major part of the members of the Irish parliament 
were either purchased or for sale, and there appeared 
to be no commanding genius of opposition to fear. 
The masses of the people looked with contempt upon 
a body of men who voluntarily ascended the auction 
block to be knocked down to the highest bidder. It 
was the policy of Pitt to hurry through with the dirty 
job with as little publicity as possible, and, in survey- 

168 



LORD "PLUNKETT 169 

ing the field, he probably found no one who seemed 
capable of pillorying the monstrous transaction with 
an eloquence that would hold it up to the contemptuous 
contemplation of posterity. 

It is a peculiarity of history, however, that dying 
nations and causes have usually called forth some 
orator of transcendent genius to sing the swan song. 
This phenomenon of history asserted itself unexpect- 
edly in the transactions surrounding the shameful con- 
summation of the union. The anticipated silence was 
broken by the stern protesting voice of one of the most 
consummate orators of Ireland. Step by step the gov- 
ernment encountered a contest which has left inefface- 
able scars upon the reputations of the prime minister 
who planned and the secretary for Ireland who exe- 
cuted the plan for the destruction of Irish independ- 
ence. With wonderful audacity and brilliancy he 
exposed the conspiracy and in his masterful and terri- 
ble philippics he has drawn an indictment which all the 
apologists of English policy for a century have been 
unable to quash. 

Nor was this his only claim to the gratitude of his 
country. One of the inducements held out by Pitt in 
favor of the union was that it would be speedily fol- 
lowed by the complete emancipation of the Catholics. 
Instead, however, the promise was speedily forgotten. 
It was the privilege of the great orator who had led 
the fight against the union to plead with unexampled 
ability in favor of the fulfilment of the promise on the 
floor of the imperial house of commons. He echoed 
there, in more conciliatory tones, the thunderous de- 
mands of O'Connell, and by sheer force of argument 
wrought a revolution in parliamentary sentiment. 



170 THE IRISH ORATORS 

And yet he has been unfortunate with posterity. Pos- 
sibly it is because he played his most conspicuous part 
between the periods of Grattan and O'Connell — shut 
in between the mountains. The more probable expla- 
nation is to be found in the voracious manner in which 
he availed himself of the privileges of the union he 
had opposed, and in the sycophantic apologies he of- 
fered for his invective against Castlereagh. His in- 
sistence upon strictly constitutional methods of refor- 
mation, his unfeeling diatribe against Emmet as he 
stood helpless in the dock, his bitter antipathy to the 
agitation of Sheil and O'Connell, while consistent with 
his principles, have deprived him of the inspirational 
qualities that attach to the personalities of the patriot 
orators of Ireland. However, his magnificent elo- 
quence entitles him to a permanent place among the 
first of the world's orators, and in his burning philip- 
pics against the union all lovers of Ireland have cause 
to cherish the memory of Lord Plunkett. 



On July first, 1764, there was born of a Presbyte- 
rian minister a son who was destined to become one 
of the stoutest champions of the established church 
and the parliamentary spokesman of the Roman Cath- 
olics. The father of this remarkable child was Thomas 
Plunkett, a man of exceptional intellectuality and 
force, famous alike for social charm and polished 
eloquence. It appears to have been his oratorical bril- 
liance which led him to the pastorate of the Strand 
Street chapel in Dublin, which was the wealthiest and 
most influential dissenting congregation in the country. 



LORD PLUNKETX 171 

The charm of his society and the beauty of his ser- 
mons seem to have broken down all the barriers of 
sect and we find his friends and associates among the 
devotees of all churches and the followers of all pro- 
fessions. Indeed he appears to have been what we 
of to-day would call a "fashionable minister." In a 
society devoted to eloquence he was looked upon as the 
most fastidious critic of oratory in Dublin; and, in the 
days when the Irish house of commons resounded 
with the eloquence of some of the most gifted tongues 
ever heard within its walls, a comfortable seat in the 
stranger's gallery was allotted to him by courtesy. He 
was as improvident as brilliant, and, upon his death in 
1778, he left his family utterly destitute. So great 
was his popularity, however, that a public subscription 
made it possible for his widow to live comfortably 
with her children. 

From his earliest years William C. Plunkett was 
fortunate in his associates. After the regulation period 
in the preparatory schools of Dublin he entered Dub- 
lin University in his fifteenth year, in company with 
the son of the famous Barry Yelverton, and found 
himself thrown into competition with as brilliant an 
array of students as had ever been assembled at 
one time within those celebrated walls. Here he 
measured swords in youthful competition with Thomas 
A. Emmet the patriot, Charles Kendall Bushe the 
orator, William Magee the churchman, Peter Bur- 
ro wes the lawyer, and Wolfe Tone the inspired revo- 
lutionist, who was destined to rob the scaffold of a 
victim through self -slaughter. It was a period of 
great intellectual activity and unrest and the debates 
of the historical society of the university, then a na- 



172 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tional institution, attracted the attention of the city 
and the attendance of prominent members of the Irish 
house of commons. The discussions usually involved 
political principles and policies then agitating the pub- 
lic mind. From the moment that Plunkett began to 
participate in the debates he was accorded, by common 
consent, the front rank as the most masterful of de- 
baters and most eloquent of orators. During this 
preparatory period he found time to look down daily 
from the gallery of the house of commons upon the 
parliamentary battles then dominated by the genius of 
Grattan and Flood ; and his love of country was fanned 
into flame by the spectacle of the members of parlia- 
ment marching through the streets of the capital be- 
tween the long stern lines of armed Volunteers on 
their way to the Castle to demand the rights of Ireland. 
The visions of that day, with their auspicious promise, 
must have hovered over him in that dismal hour when 
he himself stood almost alone in the house of com- 
mons, battling with the desperation of despair against 
the destruction of the legislative independence of his 
country. 

On leaving the university, Plunkett proceeded to 
London, where he entered as a student of law at Lin- 
coln's Inn in 1784. Here he was forced by his poverty 
to live in the most frugal manner. We find in one of 
his letters the whimsical complaint that "not a gentle- 
man or even a lady in the neighborhood has invited me 
to their house"; and we catch a glimpse of his shabby 
appearance in another complaint that "t'other evening 
some fellows had the impudence to take me for a bar- 
ber." While digging into the dry tomes of the law 
he continued his oratorical studies, and, in one of his 




Richard Roth well, R.H.A. Photograph by Geoghegan 

William Conyngham Plunkett 



LORD PLUNKETT 173 

letters to a friend, we are permitted to smile upon him 
" assailing the trees of Richmond Park." 

The Dublin to which he returned to practise his pro- 
fession was gay, and the average lawyer was quite as 
ambitious for a reputation as a bounder as for fame 
as a pleader. Upon this idleness and frivolity Plunkett 
turned his back, and his close application, together with 
his university reputation, made his progress rapid. 
During the first twelve years after his admission he 
held aloof from politics. He found himself out of 
touch with the times. The flamboyant corruption of 
the ruling classes was repulsive, but his instinctive con- 
servatism rebelled against the revolutionary trend of 
the more patriotic element. He found himself without 
a party. So uncompromising was his antipathy to 
revolutionary methods that he early broke completely 
with Thomas Addis Emmet, and while he parted with 
Wolfe Tone with more regret and in a more kindly 
spirit it was a decisive parting. 

It was inevitable, however, that a young man of 
Plunkett's majestic genius should be drawn into the 
vortex of politics, and particularly at a time when the 
governmental conditions in Ireland required the serv- 
ices of her brightest and most courageous sons. In 
1798 Lord Charlemont, who had introduced so many 
promising youths to public life, and set the feet of 
Edmund Burke in the path he was to tread to glory, 
was looking around for another protege. His atten- 
tion was directed to Plunkett, who was invited to 
Charlemont House. A prolonged conference ensued, 
during which the young man explained in -detail his 
views upon the public questions then pending or immi- 
nent. It developed that they agreed upon all points 



174 THE IRISH ORATORS 

but one. Plunkett even then had become ardently at- 
tached to the cause of Catholic emancipation, while the 
older man, who had headed the Volunteers, was still 
determined upon Protestant ascendency. Because of 
this disagreement Plunkett declined the proffer of a 
seat, but was persuaded to call again on the promise 
that the obstacle might be removed without the com- 
promising of principles. On the second call Lord 
Charlemont agreed that Plunkett should go into par- 
liament absolutely unhampered by any pledges, and 
with this understanding the young orator entered 
upon the career in the Irish parliament which was to 
be so brief and yet so glorious. 

II 

In accepting the proffered seat from Lord Charle- 
mont it appears that Plunkett was persuaded, because 
of their common determination, to resist to the last 
ditch any attempt on the part of the government to 
rob Ireland of her legislative independence. It was no 
longer a secret that this was the ambition of Pitt, the 
prime minister. The situation within the parliament 
could scarcely have been worse. The seed of corrup- 
tion sown by a succession of ministers had brought 
forth such an abundant harvest that an honest man 
could hardly exist in the house of commons. Already 
Henry Grattan, hopelessly disgusted with prevailing 
conditions, had registered an impotent protest by with- 
drawing from the house and seeking the seclusion of 
his country home. At the time Plunkett took his seat 
in the house the government was positive at all times of 
a majority of one hundred in support of ministerial 



LORD PLUNKETX 175 

policies. We have it on English authority that in 1798 
the government had at its disposal eighty-six members 
who held proprietary seats, twelve who were members 
of the government, forty- four who were placemen, 
thirty-two who were subservient because of promises 
of governmental favor, and twelve who appear to 
have been actually honest in their support. As against 
this solid phalanx there were twenty-nine who were 
rated as thoroughly independent both of the govern- 
ment and of party alignment. The active opposition 
consisted of thirty-two nominees of Whig proprietors 
and fifty-two who belonged to the popular party. 

Such was the condition of affairs when Pitt sent 
over Cornwallis, as lord lieutenant, and the infamous 
Lord Castlereagh, as secretary, with instructions to 
force through the consummation of the union by fair 
means or foul. The prospects for an effective oppo- 
sition to the machinations of the ministry seemed prac- 
tically hopeless. Indeed, the Dublin Evening Post, in 
commenting on Plunkett's entrance upon his parlia- 
mentary duties, coupled a high tribute to his integrity 
and ability with the pessimistic prediction that he 
would find himself handicapped hopelessly by the char- 
acter of the material out of which he would have to 
build a legitimate opposition. 

It is but fair to say that Cornwallis found the work 
assigned him a "dirty work" and not at all to his 
taste, and that the duty of purchasing the liberties of 
a people through the corruption of a parliament which 
represented only the Protestant minority and misrep- 
resented that, was left to the more wily and unscru- 
pulous Castlereagh. How well he accomplished his 
miserable work the world now knows. During more 



176 THE IRISH ORATORS 

than a century, and until quite recently, no historian 
has had the temerity to utter a word in his defense. 
At the time of the union he was a young man of ex- 
traordinary capacity, of brilliant mentality, cold, cal- 
culating, ambitious, impervious to attack, and abso- 
lutely without the slightest semblance of shame. That 
Pitt was an excellent judge of men may be gathered 
from his selection of this man to lead the forces of 
corruption on the floor of the Irish house of commons. 
But such a colossal scheme of corruption was quite 
beyond the capacity of Castlereagh alone, and again 
we find the government fortunate in his coadjutor. 
This was none other than the secretary to Castlereagh, 
a low creature by the name of Cook, who possessed 
neither feeling, scruple nor prejudice. 

The purposes of Pitt, operating through his Irish 
representatives, was twofold. His idea was to create 
a reign of terror through the country and thereby 
frighten the timid into the arms of England for pro- 
tection, and in this he was unintentionally aided by 
the work of the United Irishmen. He expected to 
purchase a safe majority of the .house and banked 
considerably, and not without justification, upon that 
indifference of the people as to the fate of their par- 
liament, which grew out of a prevailing contempt for 
its corruption. 

In looking over the personnel of parliament Plunkett 
found a few men of irreproachable integrity and un- 
purchasable patriotism upon whom he could rely for 
cooperation. There were his old friends of the his- 
torical society, the brilliant Bushe and the eloquent 
Burrowes, and there were Sir Laurence Parsons, 



LORD PLUNKETT 177 

George Knox, and that unexcelled parliamentarian, 
George Ponsonby. 

While the preliminary negotiations for the whole- 
sale purchase were in progress the subject of the union 
was not broached, but during this brief respite we find 
Plunkett participating in an attack upon the govern- 
ment in connection with a bill providing for the case 
of a proprietor of a newspaper leaving the country to 
avoid the consequences of an article printed in his 
paper. This was inspired by a desire to reach the Dub- 
lin Press, the organ of the United Irishmen, whose 
proprietor was at that time in Paris. Incidentally it 
was intended as an effective blow at the liberty of the 
press. It provided that the editor of a paper and two 
others should each give security for one thousand 
pounds, the ministers to determine arbitrarily upon the 
acceptability of the two securities. The speech of 
Plunkett on this occasion is chiefly interesting in that it 
shows the militant spirit in which he approached the 
final battle with the powers of darkness. 

"The liberty of the press in Ireland would receive a 
vital wound," he said. "Every channel of communica- 
tion with the great bulk of the people would be shut 
up, except those which government might think proper 
to keep open to blazon their own praise and their own 
virtue. There would reign throughout the country a 
deadly silence, except where the venal voice of some 
hireling print might break in upon it by mutilated and 
false statements of facts, by misrepresentation of prin- 
ciples, or by base and servile adulation of its masters. 
. . . The licentiousness of the press has been com- 
plained of : I will tell government a better remedy against 
it than this bill affords. Let them act in such a manner 



178 THE IRISH ORATORS 

as to be above its obloquy. Let them restore the consti- 
tution. Let them reform the abuses which pollute every 
department. Let them reform the parliament. Let them 
mitigate their system of coercion. Let them conciliate 
the people. Then they may laugh at the slanders of a 
licentious press. They will have a better defense against 
its malice than this unconstitutional measure can afford 
them." 



It is probable that the speech of Plunkett was re- 
sponsible for the fact that the security was reduced to 
five hundred pounds, but with that exception the bill 
was pushed to its passage. In the extract just cited, 
we are given an idea of the reforms for which Plun- 
kett would have labored had the parliament been 
spared. But it was already doomed. Even as he 
spoke of reforming the parliament, Castlereagh and 
Cook were busy in buying its assassins. 

The opposition, however, determined to force the. 
fighting, and a little later we find Sir Laurence Par- 
sons moving for a committee of the whole house to 
consider the prevailing discontents, their cause and 
cure. This was inspired by the insurrection of the 
United Irishmen. In opposing the motion, Castle- 
reagh declared that nothing would conciliate the United 
Irishmen but the establishment of a republic; that the 
excesses of the soldiery in meeting.the emergency was 
unpreventable ; and that existing laws were sufficient 
to deal with the situation. Here Plunkett stepped into 
the breach with a speech of audacity and brilliance in 
which he challenged the contention of Castlereagh that 
the discontent was limited to the United Irishmen 
and insisted that the people had abundant grievance. 



LORD PLUNKETTj 179 

"The rebellion of the mind by which you are assailed," 
he said, "is dreadful and not to be combatted by force. 
You have tried that remedy for three years and the ex- 
periment has failed. You have stopped the mouth of the 
public by a convention bill — have committed the prop- 
erty and the liberty of the people to the magistrate by 
the insurrection act ; you have suspended the habeas cor- 
pus act ; you have had, and you have used, a strong mil- 
itary force — as great a force as you could call for; and 
there has been nothing that would tend to strengthen 
your hands or enable you to beat down this formidable 
conspiracy that you have not been invested with. What 
effect has your system produced? Discontent and sedi- 
tion have grown threefold under your management. 

"Gentlemen have talked of French principles. These 
principles have grown indeed, but it is because they were 
not resisted by proper means. I wonder not that when 
assailed by these principles the rotten fabric of the French 
monarchy tumbled into atoms ; nor do I wonder that they 
carried terror and destruction through the despotisms of 
Europe. But I did hope that when the hollow specter 
of French democracy approached us it would have fled 
before the mild and chaste dignity of the British con- 
stitution. It would have done so if you had not destroyed 
the constitution before it reached us. You opposed it 
then with force, and its progress grew upon you. Re- 
store the constitution and it will defend you from this 
monster. Reform your parliament. Cease to bestow 
upon the worthless the wealth you extract from the bow- 
els of your people. Let the principles of that revolution 
which you profess to admire regulate your conduct, and 
the horrid shade will melt into air before you." 

Thus the repetition — "Reform the parliament," "Re- 
store the constitution." It was to this hope that 
Plunkett clung with'the tenacity of desperation. But 
the machine of utter destruction was even now at 



180 THE IRISH ORATORS 

work and the motion of Parsons was defeated by the 
minions of Castlereagh. 

The revolution of '98 soon broke out with all its 
fury and the government thought the hour auspicious 
for the proposition of the union. The parliament 
was packed by the government and Castlereagh was 
satisfied. It was decided that Cook should gradually 
prepare the public for the proposal and this was done 
through the publication of a pamphlet called, Argu- 
ments For and Against the Union, which created a 
sensation and was speedily answered by Bushe in a 
brilliant pamphlet which he called, Cease Your Fun- 
ning, or The Rebel Exposed. These were followed 
by numerous pamphlets for and against, of more or less 
merit as literary productions. 

Soon the public awoke to the danger. The Law- 
yers' Corps of Dublin was called together and spirited 
speeches against the union were made — only to elicit 
the smiles of the Castle. Bankers, merchants, various 
trades and professions followed in quick succession, 
but all these manifestations of general disapproval 
were treated by Castlereagh with derision. Finally, 
in December of 1798, the Anti-Union newspaper ap- 
peared and thirty numbers were issued containing 
brilliant contributions from Grattan, Plunkett, Bushe 
and Burro wes. The most eleven satire of Plunkett 
was a letter written by Miss Ireland concerning the 
proposal of Mr. Bull (England) of marriage (union). 
The young lady (Ireland) explains the motives of 
Mr. Bull. 

"These pretensions of his arose from his natural pride 
and imperiousness of disposition joined to a sordid and 
dishonest wish to get possession of my family estate, to 



LORD PLUNKETT, 181 

which he had no other claim than that it lay contiguous 
to his own, and that we both held under the same land- 
lord." 

She then goes on to lay the blame for the trouble 
to "the ill-advised chimerical plans of a head clerk" 
(Pitt) who "has contrived to introduce into my house 
a set of his own creatures, whose object is to excite 
dissensions among the family." She mentions one of 
these by name "a scullion in Mr. Bull's family who I 
was prevailed upon to hire as a shop-boy, though he 
was very ragged and had no discharge to produce." 
(Cook.) She complains that this "scullion" had suc- 
ceeded in corrupting many of her "domestics" (mem- 
bers of parliament). Such brilliant satires of course 
had no more effect on the government than a lot of 
peas thrown against the hide of an elephant. When 
Cornwallis opened parliament with an address from 
the throne in January, 1799, he cautiously broached 
the subject of the union — and the fight was on in 
earnest. 

In determining upon the character of his speeches 
on the subject Plunkett divided the membership of par- 
liament into three groups. Those who were pur- 
chased he proposed to hold up to contempt, those who 
were opposed to the union he intended to encourage, 
and the wavering he hoped to win by argument. His 
plan was to assail Castlereagh with a ferocity that 
would weaken him in the face of the wavering. 

The address of the lord lieutenant was delivered on 
January twenty-second and the debate began at one 
o'clock on the afternoon of that day. The house sat in 
continuous session until eleven o'clock on the following 
morning. Sir John Parnell led off with an attack and 



182 THE IRISH ORATORS 

was followed by numerous speakers along a similar 
line. That Castlereagh contemplated intimidation as 
one of his weapons was manifested early when one 
speaker made a significant reference to the government 
supporters and the suggestion was made to take his 
words down. At this Plunkett rose. 

"I have no idea that the freedom of debate shall be 
controlled by such interruptions," he said. "I do not con- 
ceive that my honorable friend is out of order, and when 
my turn comes to speak, I shall repeat these charges in 
still stronger language, if possible, and indulge gentle- 
men at the other side of the house with an opportunity 
of taking down my words if they have any fancy to 
do so." 

A little later the speaker who had been threatened 
demanded : "Is it not well known that there are votes 
in this house influenced by the minister?" At this a 
motion was made to take down his words and again 
Plunkett broke in with the suggestion that "if they are 
taken down the house will be committed to an in- 
quiry into the truth of the allegation." This bold 
declaration had its effect and the speaker was per- 
mitted to proceed. At length Castlereagh rose to re- 
ply and his speech, replete with sneers, was ridiculously 
weak as an argument. When he resumed his seat 
Plunkett rose to answer him. It was now between six 
and seven o'clock in the morning. The dreary light 
of a winter day cast weird shadows in the house. The 
massive face of Plunkett was corrugated with the lines 
of thought and anxiety and suppressed passion. His 
metallic voice rang out defiantly, challengingly, in 
awful warning. It was soon evident that there was 



LORD PLUNKETT 183 

one man in the house who could neither be purchased 
nor intimidated. 

"But, Sir," he said, "the freedom of discussion which 
has taken place on this side of the house has, it seems, 
given great offense to gentlemen on the treasury bench. 
They are men of nice and punctilious honor, and they 
will not endure that anything shall be said which im- 
plies a reflection on their untainted and virgin integrity. 
They threatened to take down the words of an honorable 
gentleman who spoke before me because they conveyed 
an insinuation; and I promised them on that occasion 
that if the fancy for taking down words continued, I 
would indulge them in it to the top of their bent. Sir, 
I am determined to keep my word with them, and I now 
will not insinuate, but I will directly assert that, base 
and wicked as is the object proposed, the means used to 
effect it have been more flagitious and abominable. 

"Do you choose to take down my words? Do you 
dare me to the proof ? 

"Sir, I have been induced to think that we had at the 
head of the executive government of this country a plain, 
honest soldier, unaccustomed to, and disdaining the in- 
trigues of politics, and who, as an additional evidence 
of the directness and purity of his views, had chosen 
for his secretary a simple and honest youth whose inex- 
perience was the voucher of his innocence ; and yet I will 
be bold to say that during the viceroyalty of this un- 
spotted veteran, and during the administration of this un- 
assuming stripling — within these last six weeks, a system 
of black corruption has been carried on within the walls 
of the Castle which would disgrace the annals of the 
worst period of the history of either country. 

"Do you choose to take down my words? 

"I need call no witness to your bar to prove them. I 
see two right honorable gentlemen sitting within your 
walls who have long and faithfully served the crown, 
and who have been dismissed because they dared to ex- 
press a sentiment in favor of the freedom of their coun- 



184 THE IRISH ORATORS 

try. I see another honorable gentleman who has been 
forced to resign his place as commissioner of the revenue 
because he refused to cooperate in this dirty job of a dirty 
administration. 

"Do you dare to deny this ? 

"I say that at this moment the threat of dismissal from 
office is suspended over the heads of the members who 
now sit around me, in order to influence their votes on 
the question of this night, involving everything that can 
be sacred or dear to man. 

"Do you desire to take down my words? Utter the 
desire and I will prove the truth of them at your bar." 

After a terrible invective aimed at Castlereagh, 
whose beautiful wife looked down from the gallery, 
Plunkett continued while the house sat in awed won- 
der: 



"I make the assertion deliberately — I repeat it, and I 
call on any man who hears me to take down my words. 
You have not been elected for this purpose. You are 
appointed to make laws and not legislatures. You are 
appointed to act under the constitution, not to alter it. 
You are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators 
and not to transfer them. And if you do so your act is 
a dissolution of the government. You resolve society 
into its original elements and no man is bound to obey 
you. . . . When you transfer you abdicate, and the 
great original trust reverts to the people, from whom it 
issued. Yourselves you may extinguish, but parliament 
you can not extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of 
the people. It is enshrined in the sanctuary of the con- 
stitution. It is immortal as the island which it protects. 
As well might the frantic suicide hope that the act which 
destroys his miserable body should extinguish his eternal 
soul. Again, I therefore warn you, you do not dare to 
lay your hands on the constitution; it is above your 
power." 



LORD PLUNKETT, 185 

Then turning again to Castlereagh, who had asked 
that the question be discussed with calmness and com- 
posure, he exclaimed in one of the most eloquent out- 
bursts in the language: 

"I am called on to surrender my birthright and my 
honor, and I am told that I should be calm and should 
be composed. National pride. Independence of our 
country. These, we are told by the minister, are only 
vulgar topics fitted for the meridian of the mob, but un- 
worthy to be mentioned to such an enlightened assembly 
as this; they are trinkets and gewgaws fit to catch the 
fancy of childish and unthinking people like you, Sir, or 
like your predecessor in that chair, but utterly unworthy 
the consideration of this house or of the matured under- 
standing of the noble lord who condescends to instruct 
us. Gracious God! We see a Perry reascending from 
the tomb, and raising his awful voice to warn us against 
the surrender of our freedom, and we see that the proud 
and virtuous feelings which warmed the breast of that 
aged and venerable man are only calculated to excite the 
contempt of this youthful philosopher, who has been 
transplanted from the nursery to the cabinet to outrage 
the feelings and the understanding of the country." 

It was in conclusion that Plunkett referred to the 
efforts of the minister to create internal dissensions 
with the view to making easy the overthrow of the 
constitution and made his famous vow which he was 
never permitted to forget in the later days when he 
and Castlereagh formed a mutual admiration society : 

"They (ministers) have united every rank and descrip- 
tion of men by the pressure of this grand and momentous 
subject; and I tell them that they will see every honest 
and every independent man in Ireland rally round her 
constitution, and merge every other consideration in his 



186 THE IRISH ORATORS 

opposition to this ungenerous and odious measure. For 
my part, I will resist it to the last gasp of my existence 
and with the last drop of my blood, and when I feel the 
hour of my dissolution approaching I will, like the father 
of Hannibal, take my children to the altar and swear 
them to eternal hostility against the invaders of their 
country's freedom." 

The effect of this powerful speech was magical and 
the government was defeated by a majority of one. 

Two days later the debate was renewed on the re- 
port on the address when Parsons, now determined to 
follow up his advantage, moved to amend through the 
expurgation of the paragraph relating to the union. 
The house was in session until noon on the following 
day and the government was defeated by a majority 
of five. 

The tools of the Castle, burning under the scorpion 
lash of Plunkett, were now more than ever determined 
to resort to intimidation, and, while they had lacked 
the moral courage to stop Plunkett in his castigation, 
they now conceived of another plan which smacks 
very much of a conspiracy to murder. Castlereagh 
himself had thrown out the idea, although probably 
not this special suggestion, in his reply to Plunkett 
in which he had hinted at a duel. This led to the 
formation of the notorious Union Dueling Club which 
grew out of a dinner at Castlereagh's home attended 
by a number of the fighting members of the mer- 
cenaries. After the wine had flowed freely it was 
suggested that each man make the honor of the gov- 
ernment his own and act accordingly. But even in 
this the hirelings were checkmated. The moment the 
report of the meeting at Castlereagh' s got out a sim- 



LORD PLUNKETT 187 

ilar meeting was held at Charlemont House, and had 
the members of Castlereagh's fighting squad seen fit 
to carry out their threat they would doubtless have 
been accommodated to their hearts' content. 

After the second defeat of the government, Castle- 
reagh moved for an adjournment until February sev- 
enth with the evident intention of awaiting further in- 
structions from Pitt. No more was heard of the union 
until in May when the matter was forced upon the 
house by a motion to the effect that the speaker should 
issue a writ for the return of a member for Kilmallock 
in the place of C. S. Oliver, who had accepted the 
escheatorship of Munster, a position similar to the 
Chiltern Guards in England. This led to a pointed 
question, aimed at Castlereagh, as to why this place 
had not been offered to Colonel Cole. To the query 
Castlereagh sat mute. At this Plunkett entered the 
debate with a severe castigation of Castlereagh's con- 
temptuous silence and the direct and explicit charge 
that the government was using its patronage for pur- 
poses of corruption. The motion which followed to 
grant a pension of ten pounds a year to Cole led to 
another debate in which one purchased creature of the 
crown exposed his hand by the insinuation that the 
enemies of the union were "also" interested from 
selfish motives. This was only another peg upon which 
Plunkett hastened to hang another direct charge of 
corruption : 

"I wish that the gentleman had bestowed some of his 
indignation on the conduct which gave rise to the pres- 
ent debate ; and if a conduct the most base and flagrant 
could inspire terms of disapprobation, the honorable and 
learned member must certainly have recovered the use 



188 THE IRISH ORATORS 

of his tongue. He would then have had to reprobate 
the most shameful hypocrisy — the most scandalous ef- 
frontery ; and the warmth of his eloquence and the free- 
dom of his manner would have been well employed in 
reprehending the conduct of a minister who had not only 
thrown away the substance, but the semblance of virtue." 

Lord Cornwallis prorogued parliament on the first 
of June with the announcement that the government 
would bring on the question of the union again at 
the earliest opportunity in the next session. It was 
during the recess that Cornwallis made his celebrated 
union tour of Ireland soliciting signatures of all 
classes, down to the very dregs, in favor of the gov- 
ernmental project — a tour graphically and brilliantly 
described by Plunkett in a passage which will be cited 
later on. 

When parliament met on January fifteenth, 1800, 
the great and final debate on the union was forced. 
In his address from the throne, Cornwallis failed to 
mention the union, and when, at the conclusion, the 
hirelings of the Castle moved an address echoing the 
Cornwallis speech, Parsons moved an amendment to 
the effect that the house would never tolerate the 
union. In his speech in support of his motion Par- 
sons charged that the failure to mention the union 
was due to a desire on the part of -the minister to take 
the house at a disadvantage. At this Castlereagh re- 
plied that it had been the intention to submit the 
project of the union in a separate address. The debate 
followed, and in the course of it the work accom- 
plished by Castlereagh during the recess was dis- 
closed when Doctor Brown, of the University of Dub- 
lin, who had violently opposed the union in the last 



LORD PLUNKETT 189 

session, rose to support Castlereagh. The moment he 
sat down Plunkett took the floor. Referring to the 
changed attitude of Brown he said : 

"What change has taken place? Has the measure 
changed its nature? Or the minister his objects, or the 
countries their relations? No, you shall know the 
changes that have taken place — I will unmask the men 
who have dared to come into the midst of parliament 
and people to purchase their liberties by sordid bribery 
and to subdue their spirits by lawless force, and if I can 
not awaken the feelings of honor or virtue in their hearts, 
will call the blush of shame into their cheeks." 

In the speech that followed Plunkett surpassed him- 
self in brilliancy, and several passages will be cited 
later as illustrating certain features of his eloquence. 
His historical review of the relations of the two coun- 
tries was masterful and significant, all tending to show 
the utter unreliability of promises on the part of the 
ministers of the crown. There is something of pathos 
in his discussion of the rebellion of '98 and the treat- 
ment accorded the loyal element which had armed 
itself in behalf of the crown only to find the project 
of the union again forced upon them : 

*I do not wish to inquire too minutely why the embers 
of rebellion have been so long suffered to exist; I do 
not wish to derogate from the praise to which the noble 
lord may be entitled for his clemency. Its very excesses, 
if they do not claim praise, are at least entitled to indul- 
gence; but when I see that all the rays of mercy and 
forbearance are reserved to gild the brow of the vice- 
roy, and that all the odium of harshness and severity 
is flung upon the parliament; when I see the clemency 
of the chief governor throwing its mantle over the mid- 



190 THE IRISH ORATORS 

night murderer; when I see it holding parley with the 
armed rebel in the field; and when I see the task of 
making war against the victim in his grave and the in- 
fant in the cradle thrown by the same government upon 
the parliament, I can not avoid suspecting that there is 
something more than the mere milk of human kindness 
in the forbearance on the one part, and something more 
than mere political caution in the severities of the other. 
But, sir, this rebellion was subdued by the parliament 
and the people of Ireland; and before the country had 
a breathing time; before the loyalist had time to rest 
from his labors ; before the traitor had received his pun- 
ishment or his pardon; whilst we were all stunned by 
the stupendous events which we had scarcely passed; 
whilst the ground was yet smoking with the blood of 
an O'Neill and of a Mountjoy, the wicked conspiracy 
was announced which was to rob their country of its 
liberties and their minor children of their birthright. 
With a* suspended habeas corpus act, with the military 
tribunals in every county, the overwhelming and irre- 
trievable measure of union was announced for the free, 
enlightened and calm discussion of an Irish parliament, 
and with all these engines of terror still suspended over 
our heads it is again submitted to them." 

But eloquence and truth and justice could not hope 
to prevail over a bought and paid for parliament, and 
all these bitter assaults and invectives of Plunkett were 
received, for the most part, by Castlereagh in un- 
ruffled silence. 

The stage was now set for the final act. After 
Plunkett resumed his seat one of the Castle spokes- 
men began an attack upon Plunkett which was never 
finished after the speaker caught the contemptuous 
sneer upon the face of the orator. And after this man 
concluded, Henry Grattan, worn and ill, who had hur- 
ried to Dublin in the hope of stemming the tide, was 




Sir T. Lawrence, Pinx. 



Viscount Castlereagh 



LORD PLUNKETT 191 

all but carried into the house when even the hardened 
Castlereagh followed the example of the entire house 
in rising to his feet as a tribute to the indomitable 
patriot. By taking his place beside Plunkett, Grattan 
recognized him as the head of the opposition he him- 
self had so often led. He spoke for two hours, sit- 
ting. The vote was taken. The government won 
with a majority of forty-two. And in that majority 
history has read of the corrupt activity of Lord Castle- 
reagh during the recess. 

The rest is briefly told. The government hurriedly 
followed up its advantage and the parliament of Ire- 
land passed from existence. The work of Plunkett 
had failed in that he had been unable to prevent the 
purchase of a parliament; but his immortal speeches 
of protest have been a heritage to posterity in Ireland, 
and have been echoed from generation to generation, 
until the world has come to understand the infamy of 
the transaction. Lord Castlereagh passed from Ire- 
land to a political career in England. His last action 
was to push through parliament an act suspending 
the writ of habeas corpus in Ireland. One August 
day, twenty-two years after the union, he cut his 
throat. His despotic principles had made him hated 
in England as in Ireland, and the multitude assembled 
at Westminster Abbey, shouted execrations on his 
coffin as it was removed from the hearse. It was Lord 
Byron who expressed the universal verdict in the lines : 

"So he has cut his throat? He? Who? 
The man who cut his country's long ago." 

The end of Lord Clare was quite as miserable. His 



192 THE IRISH ORATORS 

biographer, O'Flannigan, has damned him with the 
epitaph: "He was the pivot on which all the move- 
ments of the Castle turned, the center from which all 
its schemes and designs radiated; his words were 
strong as written law with a succession of administra- 
tions." Clever, courageous, eloquent beyond any of 
the other tools of the Castle, he won the admiration 
and commendation of Pitt only to shock his master 
later on by the brutality of his proposals. He was a 
slight delicate man but haughty and insolent. His 
character speaks from the canvas of Hamilton. The 
union accomplished, the disreputable work done, Pitt 
had no further use for his tool, and Clare's brief ex- 
perience in the English house of lords was one of 
isolation. He died, disappointed and embittered, one 
year after the union, and was buried with much pomp 
in St. Peter's churchyard, Dublin. As his remains 
were being conveyed to the grave, the. people in the 
streets, as in the case of Castlereagh, hooted the ex- 
pression of their hate and horror. Pie died despised 
in Ireland. 

After the fall of the parliament Plunkett appears 
to have had some difficulty in adjusting himself to 
the new order of things. It probably appealed to him 
in the light of a personal calamity, for the celebrity 
and notoriety he had attained during the battle over 
the union had made him a national hero. The con- 
summation of the union dimmed his prospects. Dub- 
lin became for a season as melancholy as a deserted 
banquet hall. The parliament house, now closed, 
loomed dismally like a sepulcher. The town houses of 
famous members of the late parliament were closed 



LORD PLUNKETT 193 

and society underwent an eclipse. There seemed no 
possibility of the restoration of the parliament except 
through revolution, and to measures of violence 
Plunkett was then, as ever afterward, a bitter enemy. 
For a time he is said to have meditated migration 
either to England or the United States. Fortunately 
for his peace of mind his legal practise suffered no 
diminution, and in time he appears to have recovered 
his spirits and to have become reconciled to the union 
— a reconciliation which ultimately became so complete 
as to have deprived him of much of the popularity he 
had won. 

Nothing has done so much to injure his reputation 
among his countrymen as his unfortunate participa- 
tion in the prosecution of Robert Emmet. The fact 
that he was soon afterward appointed solicitor-general 
has given all too much ground for suspecting that his 
bitter attack upon the unfortunate martyr was in- 
tended as an olive branch to the government. It is 
but just to say however that his course at this time 
was in strict conformity with the principles of his 
lifetime — his insistence upon constitutional methods 
of opposition and his abhorrence of any policy sug- 
gestive of disorder. As time went on, however, he ap- 
peared to depart more and more from his original 
attitude until at length we find him holding office under 
the same Pitt who had planned the union, entering 
into the closest relations with the Castlereagh against 
whom he had hurled his invectives, and becoming one 
of the most ardent of imperialists. He was never per- 
mitted to forget his oath to swear his children to an 
eternal enmity to the invaders of the freedom of his 



194 THE IRISH ORATORS 

country, especially when he accepted a lucrative posi- 
tion under the government and found easy berths for 
some of these same children. 

When he entered the imperial house of commons in 
1807, on the solicitation of Lord Grenville, with whom 
he was politically affiliated throughout his subsequent 
career, the determining factor appears to have been 
his desire to serve his country on the emancipation 
proposition. From the moment he took the oath until 
the passage of the Relief bill in 1829 he labored un- 
ceasingly and effectively to strike the civil shackles 
from the limbs of his Catholic fellow countrymen, and 
his eloquence contributed largely toward softening the 
Protestant animosities of England and the elimination 
of prejudices. While he was working assiduously in 
the house of lords and Grattan in the commons, O'Con- 
nell was essentially the leader about whose career 
must be woven the story of the successful fight. The 
work of Plunkett, however, was of inestimable value 
to the cause." His speech in favor of Catholic rights 
delivered in 1813 was characteried by Castlereagh as 
one "never to be forgotten;'' that of 1821 was pro- 
nounced by Sir Robert Peel to "stand nearly the high- 
est in point of ability and eloquence of any ever heard 
in the house." We shall see that the determining cause 
of the final victory was the genius -of O'Connell. Too 
much credit can not be given to Plunkett, who fought 
the battle in the very house of the enemies of Ireland, 
and through his tact and eloquence compelled the 
capitulation of an ancient prejudice and dissipated an 
ancient fear. After the passage of the Relief bill his 
appearances in the house of peers became less frequent 
and finally ceased altogether. 



LORD PLUNKETT 193 

III 

Upon his appointment as chancellor of Ireland in 
1830, Lord Plunkett entered upon the last phase of 
his career — the last and least creditable. A great law- 
yer, he was not a great judge. As the years went by 
he was removed more and more from the view of the 
public, and long before his retirement he had ceased 
to attract attention. He was a butterfly embalmed in 
a rich ointment. Eleven years later he found that 
notwithstanding his often reiterated assertion that 
England had learned how to treat Ireland as an equal, 
he was to England nothing but an Irishman. After 
his distinguished services, at an hour when he was 
considered the greatest living son of the green isle, 
he was shamefully, ruthlessly, thrust aside and lit- 
erally driven from the bench. The wound never 
healed. An old man now, he set out upon his travels, 
and lingered long in Rome, where he found the classic 
atmosphere extremely fascinating. Then he returned 
to Ireland and took up his residence at his beautiful 
country home at Old Connaught, situated under the 
Sugar-loaf mountain on the border of the county of 
Wicklow. Hither he had often turned even during 
the days of his greatest activity. Hither many a time 
had Grattan driven from his place a few miles distant 
for an evening under the roof of the great orator. 
Here Sir Walter Scott lingered for several days while 
enjoying the surrounding scenery. Occasionally he 
would go to London for an evening at Holland House, 
but he preferred to remain at Old Connaught sur- 
rounded by his children and grandchildren and f riends* 
Sometimes in his melancholy moments he would drive 



196 [THE IRISH ORATORS 

to a near-by mountain whence he could look down 
upon the Four Courts of Dublin in the hazy distance; 
and often he would drive along the margin of the bay 
of Bantry, pausing to chat with the children who had 
been taught to look with reverence upon the old man 
who had become as a child again. His mind lost its 
cunning before his body lost its strength and the last 
years of his life were spent in intellectual twilight. At 
length, on January fourth, 1854, in his ninetieth year 
— more than half a century after his marvelous phil- 
ippics against Castlereagh, and a quarter of a century 
after the completion of his work for Catholic emanci- 
pation, he died. He was buried in the Mount Jerome 
cemetery, near Dublin, and his bust was set up in the 
Four Courts of Dublin. 

If Lord Brougham, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Castle- 
reagh and many of their contemporaries were ac- 
ceptable critics of oratory, Lord Plunkett was one of 
the very greatest orators of modern times. We can 
readily believe from the descriptions that have been 
handed down to us that something of the impression 
he invariably made upon his hearers may have been 
due to his imposing physical appearance. He was a 
man of commanding height and compactly built, sug- 
gesting the most unusual powers of physical endurance. 
His face was coarse, blunt and harsh, the sort of face 
capable of dominating a mob. His forehead was high 
and broad and in moments of mental exertion was 
deeply lined. His eyes were not notably expressive, 
although they are described by some who heard him 
in some of his greater efforts as shining with a steady 
steel-like luster. He appears to have been parsimonious 
with his gestures, and to have delivered many of his 



LORD PLUNKETT 197 

most telling passages standing immobile as a statue. 
His favorite gesture was unique and consisted in rais- 
ing both arms above his head, holding them in that 
position for a moment and bringing them down to- 
gether at the close of a period with an overwhelming 
air of finality. His voice was not one of the attractive 
phases of his eloquence and seems to have been rather 
harsh, cold, metallic. Strangely enough the most sat- 
isfactory picture of Plunkett in action was painted in 
a poem, by Bulwer Lytton, which is so graphic and 
spirited as to be an essential part of any adequate com- 
ment upon his oratorical manner : 

"But one there was to whom with joint consent 

All yield the crown in that high argument. 

Mark where he sits ; gay flutters round the bar, 

Gathering like moths attracted by the star. 

In vain the ballet and the ball invite : 

E'en beaux look serious — Plunkett speaks to-night. 

Mark where he sits, his calm brow downward bent, 

Listening, revolving, passive, yet intent. 

Revile his cause : his lips vouchsafe no sneer ; 

Defend it : still from him there comes no cheer, 

No sign without of what he feels or thinks ; 

Within, slow fires are hardening iron links. 

Now one glance round, now upward turns the brow. 

Hushed every breath ; he rises — mark him now. 

No grace in feature, no command in height, 

Yet his whole presence fills and awes the sight. 

Wherefore ? you ask. I can but guide your guess. 

Man has no majesty like earnestness. 

His that rare warmth — collected central heat — 

As if he strives to check the heart's loud beat, 

Tame strong conviction and indignant zeal, 

And leave you free to think as he must feel. 

Tones slow, not loud, but deep drawn from the breast, 

Action unstudied, and at times suppressed ; 



198 THE IRISH ORATORS 

But as he neared some reasoning's massive close, 

Strained o'er his bending head his strong arms rose, 

And sudden fell, as if from falsehood torn 

Some grey old keystone and hurled down with scorn. 

His diction, that which most exalts debate : 

Terse and yet smooth, nor florid, yet ornate ; 

Prepared enough ; long meditated fact 

By words at will made sinuous and compact 

With gems the genius of the lamp must win, 

Not scattered loose, but welded firmly in, 

So that each ornament the most displayed, 

Decked not the sheathe, but hardened more the blade : 

Your eye scarce caught the dazzle of the show 

The shield and cuirass crashed beneath the blow." 

So much for the purely physical phases of his elo- 
quence. His style has commanded an admiration from 
English critics that has been withheld from the greater 
portion of Irish orators. Indeed his style does not 
contain the slightest resemblance to any of the other 
great Irish orators treated in this work. Some critics 
have compared the grave and serious eloquence of some 
of his passages dealing with history to the finest pages 
of Hallam; and in the philosophical reasoning, the 
marvelous range of his erudition, the purity of his dic- 
tion, and the dignity and decorum of his rhetoric he 
probably suggests either Burke or Macaulay more than 
does any other speaker. We shall see a little later in 
one citation that in moments of emotion he resembles 
Fox. 

In his introduction to the biography of Lord 
Plunkett by David Plunkett, Lord Brougham, one of 
England's greatest masters of eloquence, summarizes 
his view of Plunkett' s art. "There never was a more 
argumentative speaker," he wrote, "or one more diffi- 



LORD PLUNKETT 199 

cult to grapple with or answer ; and the extraordinary 
impression produced by him was caused by the whole 
texture of his speeches being argumentative; the 
diction plain but forcible, the turn often epigrammatic; 
the figures as natural as they were unexpected ; so that 
what had occurred to no one seemed as if every one 
ought to have anticipated it. But all — strong expres- 
sions, terse epigram, happy figure — were wholly sub- 
servient to the purpose in view, and were manifestly 
perceived never to be themselves the object, never to 
be introduced for their own sake. They were the 
sparks thrown off by the motion of the engine, not 
fireworks to amuse by their singularity or please by 
their beauty; all was for use, not ornament; all for 
work, nothing for display; the object always in view, 
the speaker never, either of himself or of the audi- 
ence." Supplementary to Brougham's comments we 
have a letter written by Lord Dudley to a friend in 
1819: "By the by, Plunkett has cut a great figure 
this year," he wrote; "his speech in answer to Mack- 
intosh was among the most perfect replies I have 
ever heard. He assailed the fabric of his adversary, 
not by an irregular damaging fire that left parts of it 
standing, but by a complete, rapid systematic process 
of demolition, that did not leave one stone standing 
upon another." 

While perfectly true that Plunkett never permitted 
his fancy to run wild the impression must not be left 
that he gave no heed to ornamentation. He pos- 
sessed a lively imagination which he carefully sub- 
ordinated to his judgment. That he never underrated 
the legitimate part that beauty of imagery plays in all 
first-class oratory may be properly assumed from the 



200 THE IRISH ORATORS 

fact that he prepared with infinite care many of his 
finest figures, using them as "rhetorical stepping 
stones," as he himself told Richard Lalor Sheil. 

An illustration of his employment of figures is 
found in the following : 

"In those days reform approached us in far different 
guise ; it came as a felon, and we resisted ; it now comes 
as a creditor ; we admit the debt and only dispute on the 
instalments by which it shall be paid." 

One of his most famous figures was employed in an 
argument to the court in a case where the documents 
conferring an original title on his client, having been 
lost, his case rested chiefly upon long and unques- 
tioned possession of the property. 

"Time," he said, "while with one hand he mows down 
the muniments of our titles, with the other metes out 
those portions of durations which render unnecessary the 
evidence he has swept away." 

There are little gems of imagery scattered all through 
his speeches — unpretentious because so naturally em- 
ployed. Thus, speaking of the English soldier he says, 
"He never would raise his sword to stab the liberties 
of Ireland, for he knows that the life blood of Eng- 
land must issue through the wound." Describing a 
speech of Pitt with "a couple of powdered lacqueys of 
epithets waiting upon every substantive;" thus refer- 
ring to the action of Castlereagh in Ireland after the 
pronouncement of Pitt he said, "after the great le- 
viathan has concluded his tumblings, a young whale 
puts up his nostrils, and spurts his blubber on this 



• < LORD PLUNKETX 201 

country;" thus his description of the house of com- 
mons because of its vacillation on the question of 
emancipation as "suffering with hot and cold fits;" 
thus his reference to Elizabeth's refusal to establish a 
system of espionage as a refusal "to make windows to 
look into the hearts of her subjects;" and thus his 
striking image in the enumeration of the immortals of 
English politics who had supported emancipation for 
the Catholics — "supported by these great names, and 
not encountered by one which has had sufficient buoy- 
ancy to float along the stream of time." 

There have been few modern orators with a greater 
capacity for invective. One example of this power 
practised upon Castlereagh is especially worth noting. 
The most biting and hurtful feature is to be found in 
the last four words, in view of the fact that Lady 
Castlereagh, a woman of extraordinary beauty, who 
looked down from the gallery, was childless though 
married for several years : 



"The example of the prime minister of England, in- 
imitable in its vices, may deceive the noble lord. The 
minister of England has his faults. He abandoned in 
his later years the principle of reform, by professing 
which he had attained the early confidence of the people 
of England, and in the whole of his political conduct 
he has shown himself haughty and intractable; but it 
must be admitted that he is endowed by nature with a 
towering and transcendent intellect, and that the vastness 
of his resources keeps pace with the magnificence and 
unboundedness of his projects. I thank God that it is 
much more easy for him to transfer his apostacy and 
his insolence than his comprehension and his sagacity; 
and I feel the safety of my country in the wretched fee- 
bleness of her enemy. I can not fear that the constitu- 



202 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tion which has been founded by the wisdom of the ages 
and cemented by the blood of patriots and heroes is to 
be smitten to its center by such a green and sapless twig 
as this." 

Another illustration of his powers of denunciation, 
his description of the tour of Lord Cornwallis in 
search of union signatures, may also be used as indi- 
cating that rapidity of style of which Fox alone is a 
rival : 



"It is painful to dwell upon that disgraceful expedition. 
No place too obscure to be visited, no rank too low to 
be courted, no threat too vile to be employed ; the coun- 
ties not sought to be legally convened by their sheriffs ; no 
attempt to collect the unbiased support of the intelligent 
and independent part of the community; public ad- 
dresses sought for from petty villages, and private sig- 
natures smuggled from public counties — and how pro- 
cured ? By the influence of absentee landlords, not over 
the affections, but over the terrors of their tenantry. 
By griping agents and revenue officers. And after all 
this mummery had been exhausted; after the luster of 
royalty had been tarnished by this vulgar intercourse with 
the lowest of the rabble; after every spot had been se- 
lected where a paltry address could be procured, and 
every place avoided where a manly sentiment could be 
encountered; after abusing the names of the dead and 
forging the signatures of the livings after polling the in- 
habitants of the jail, and calling out against parliament 
the suffrages of those who did not sign them until they 
had got their protection in their pockets; after employing 
the revenue officer to threaten the publican that he should 
be marked as a victim, and the agent to terrify the shiv- 
ering tenant that his turf-bog would be withheld ; after 
employing your military commanders, the uncontrolled 
arbiters of "life and death, to hunt the rabble against the 
constituted authorities; after squeezing the lowest dregs 



LORD PLUNKETT 203 

of a population of near five millions you obtained about 
five thousand signatures, three-fourths of whom affixed 
their names in surprise, terror or total ignorance of the 
subject; and after all this canvass of the people, and 
after all this corruption wasted on the parliament, and 
after all your boasting that you must carry the measure 
by a triumphant majority, you do not dare to announce 
the subject in the speech from the throne." 

While not entirely devoid of pathos and humor a 
study of his speeches fails to disclose any partiality 
for the use of either. His few humorous passages 
are a trifle clumsy and his most pathetic passages on 
the death of Grattan were never completed because 
of the violence of his emotions. He w r as incapable of 
the artistry of tears. 

Lord Plunkett was unfortunate in the subjects 
treated in his speeches. Had he had the opportunity to 
treat of such subjects as occupied the genius of Ed- 
mund Burke, the mastery of his treatment and the 
chaste character of his eloquence would have given to 
his orations a permanent value they do not now pos- 
sess. His majestic eloquence expended in behalf of 
emancipation, while novel at the time of its delivery, 
now, in this more liberal and better day, seems the 
expression of 'indisputable and universally conceded 
truths — much ado about nothing. Consequently .these 
speeches are only possessed of a certain historical 
value. They are torches illuminating the dark day 
that has passed from the calendar. His two striking 
speeches against the union will be read long after those 
on emancipation, or as long as lovers of liberty find 
pleasure in lingering over the history of the battles 
that have been fought for its preservation. 



V 

ROBERT EMMET 
TJhe Insurrection of 1803 

THERE was a dearth of political activity in 
Ireland from the destruction of the Irish parlia- 
ment, in 1800, until about 1816, when O'Connell 
began to organize the people for the emancipation 
battle. During the greater part of this period the ac- 
knowledged leaders of Ireland w T ere fighting the bat- 
tles of their country, as best they could, within the 
walls of Saint Stephens, across the channel. This 
period is immortal in Irish history however because 
of one thrilling episode — the insurrection of Robert 
Emmet. The numerous children of Erin who have 
paid the penalty of their love of country upon the 
scaffold have reached the heart of the Irish race to an 
even greater degree than the splendid characters who 
have successfully fought her battles and attained re- 
sults, and died, after the fashion of gentlemen, in their 
beds. Emmet accomplished less perhaps than any 
other of the idols of Ireland. His mistakes were more 
glaring, his weaknesses more appalling, and possibly 
the results of his ill-timed insurrection were more dis- 
astrous to the fortunes of his country. The secret of 
the universal love, which hallows him, lies in the fact 
that he had scarcely attained manhood when he made 

204 



ROBERT EMMET, 205 

the vicarious sacrifice, and that his heart was right. 
And so he is tenderly called "the child of the heart 
of Erin." In thousands of cottages throughout the 
world, one of the treasured possessions is a crude 
green print of a boyish figure making his appeal "to 
time and to eternity and not to men." One thing he 
did in the few days allotted to him — he taught the sons 
of Ireland how to die, and by his dramatic appeal to 
the imagination of mankind, centered the world's at- 
tention on the cause of his unhappy country. The pa- 
thetic and inspiring story of his death will never fade. 
The pen of Moore has so sweetly sung his requiem that 
the music lingers on and on. The genius of Irving 
still wrings from even cynics' eye the tears of com- 
passion as they peruse the story of The Broken Heart. 
He has no monument — but he needs none. Even the 
spot where he lies buried is enveloped in mystery — it 
is enough to know that he lies in Irish ground. Only 
one of his speeches has been preserved — but every Irish 
mother teaches it to her children. Thus, when others 
who did more have been forgotten or are but vaguely 
remembered, the pulse of every son and daughter of 
the green isle of romance and tragedy will quicken at 
the mention of the name of Robert Emmet. 



The story of Emmet's life and genius is shrouded 
in more of mystery than that of the other popular he- 
roes and orators of Ireland. His biographers have 
written tenderly and lovingly of his brief career, but 
even the best of these have left us in the dark regard- 
ing some of the most important periods of his life. 



206 THE IRISH ORATORS 

With the exception of the fragmentary recollections 
of Tom Moore, all that has been known of his life was 
incorporated many years ago in the rather pretentious 
biography of Doctor Madden. The subsequent Mem- 
oirs of the Emmet family by Doctor Emmet have 
thrown no additional light of a positive nature upon 
the hidden years. The sketch of the Countess D'Haus- 
sonville is but a touching tribute predicated upon Mad- 
den's story. 

He was born of heroic stock. His father, an emi- 
ment physician, practised in the south of Ireland dur- 
ing the greater part of his life, but finally settled in 
Dublin where Robert, his seventeenth child, was born, 
on March fourth, 1778. He was as fortunate in his 
home environment as in his birth. The father was a 
man of superior attainments. His character was in 
keeping with his education. Beginning his Dublin 
career as a governmental placeman, holding the posir 
tion of state physician, and practising in the families 
of the coterie of the Castle, he finally enrolled himself 
with the patriot party, and, with a characteristic con- 
sistency, relinquished his lucrative positions in the 
state. The erstwhile Tory developed into one of the 
most uncompromising of patriots, and it was at his 
knee that his youngest child was impregnated with 
that passionate love of Ireland which was to lead to 
his death upon the scaffold. 

Of the period which intervened between the cradle 
and the college we have but meager information. He 
was first sent to the school of a Mr. Oswald which was 
noted for its superior mathematical training, and then 
transferred to the celebrated school of Samuel Whyte, 
where Richard B. Sheridan, Thomas Moore and other 



ROBERT EMMET 207 

famous Irishmen received their preliminary education. 
He later attended the school of the Reverend Mr. Lewis 
in Camden Street. The rapidity of his progress ap- 
pears in the fact that in his fifteenth year he was 
enrolled as a student at Trinity College. 

While few colleges have produced so many men of 
extraordinary brilliancy, it seems from contemporary 
testimony that none other of the students of Trinity 
has ever made such a profound impression by the 
brilliancy of their mentality as did Emmet. Though 
highly imaginative and fond of poetry he was sur- 
passingly strong in mathematics and positively bril- 
liant in chemistry. It was not his superiority in these 
studies however that caused him to stand out so pre- 
eminently among his fellows. Very early in his college 
career he gave evidence of that inspiring eloquence 
which was destined to enliven the debating societies 
of the college and to call down upon his head the dis- 
approving frown of the Castle. The country at this 
time was in a ferment of insurrection. The flagrant 
wrongs of Ireland were calling loudly for redress, and 
surface indications justified the fear that the patriots 
were preparing to make their appeal to the sword. 
The governmental functionaries realized that a crisis 
was approaching, and were sleeping on their arms. 
The agitation throughout the country gave a nervous 
energy to the watchfulness of the authorities. It was 
reserved for the youthful Emmet to carry the defiant 
attitude of the nationalists into the sacred conservative 
precincts of the college and, through the magnetic 
brilliancy of his eloquence, to arouse the fighting in- 
stincts of the students. 

This was made possible through debating societies 



208 THE IRISH ORATORS 

with which Emmet immediately affiliated. The au- 
thorities had strictly forbidden the discussion of con- 
temporary politics. With rare ingenuity Emmet found 
a way around this prohibition. Through analogy and 
insinuation he preached the doctrine of resistance to 
tyranny, preached it so persistently and effectively 
that even conservative Trinity became permeated with 
it. The fame of the orator spread among the people 
of the city, and finally called for the consideration of 
the Castle. At this time there was little in Emmet's 
appearance to suggest the agitator. In the classroom 
and on the campus his modesty of demeanor, his ap- 
parent lack of ambition, his inanimate brow and rather 
ordinary physical aspect discouraged the idea that he 
was at all dangerous. It was when he spoke that he 
underwent a transformation. His eyes flashed, his en- 
tire countenance was suddenly and strangely illumi- 
nated, his physical mediocrity miraculously took on the' 
imposing features of conscious power, his voice rang 
with an emotion that quickly communicated to his 
hearers, and he seemed for the moment the very per- 
sonification of Ireland — glowing at the recollection of 
her departed glories, burning in the contemplation of 
her wrongs. No one who heard him at Trinity ever 
forgot the effect of his eloquence. A quarter of a cen- 
tury after his death the Reverend Archibald Douglas, 
then one of the most polished pulpit orators of Dublin, 
said that "so gifted a creature does not appear in a 
thousand years." And after having become familiar 
with the classic orators who held forth at Westminster, 
and heard all the most eloquent men of his time, Tom 
Moore, in looking back upon the speeches of the mar- 
tyr, declared that he had never heard loftier or purer 




Robert Emmet 
Irom Commerford's Portrait 



ROBERT EMMET 209 

eloquence "as well from its own exciting power as 
from the susceptibility with which his audience caught 
up every allusion to passing events." 

Unfortunately none of these speeches in their en- 
tirety has come down to us and we are compelled to 
accept the judgment of the orator's contemporaries. 
His method of injecting politics into the discussions 
of the students was adroit. On one occasion the ques- 
tion submitted was as to whether complete freedom of 
discussion is essential to the well-being of a good and 
virtuous government. There was dynamite in the 
very question, especially at a time when editors who 
dared disturb the complacency of the Castle by the 
publication of unwelcome truths were being driven to 
bankruptcy and thrown into prison. Only a little while 
before Cur ran had vainly sought to save Rowan and 
Finnerty from the vengeance of the state. In advocat- 
ing the affirmative in this debate, Emmet discoursed 
eloquently of ancient tyrannies, cleverly mirroring lo- 
cal conditions in his pictures of the infamies of the past, 
and then, in an impetuous burst of defiance, declaring 
it the duty of the state to permit the freest discussions, 
and significantly closing with the suggestion that 
where such freedom was curtailed it "was up to the 
people to draw practical conclusions from the tyranny 
of the government and to act upon their resolves." 

We have another striking instance of his methods 
drawn from the memories of Tom Moore. The so- 
ciety had under discussion the question as to the rela- 
tive effect of a democracy and an aristocracy in 
advancing the causes of science and education, and 
Emmet, with more than his customary brilliancy 
ardently espoused the cause of the democracy. On 



210 THE IRISH ORATORS 

this occasion he spoke like one inspired, with a rapidity 
of utterance, a wealth of illustration, and a passionate 
intensity that entranced his fellow students, among 
whom was the poet. Not content with recounting the 
encouragement held forth to literature by the republics 
of antiquity, he audaciously took the new republic of 
France as an illustration. This, within itself, was, at 
that time, scarcely less than treason. Pitt was pre- 
paring to grapple with the people across the channel, 
and all the conservative forces of England were en- 
listed in the war against what was termed the irre- 
ligious rabble of Paris. Even Burke had taken up his 
pen to voice his horror at the execution of the queen. 
The effect was therefore magical when the orator, 
after referring to the act of Caesar in carrying with 
him across the river his commentaries and his sword, 
reached a dramatic climax in the startling exclamation : 

"Thus France at this time swims through a sea of 
blood ; but while in one hand she wields the sword against 
her aggressors, with the other she upholds the interest of 
literature, uncontaminated by the bloody tide through 
which she struggles." 

On another occasion the club had under discussion 
the question whether a soldier is always obliged to obey 
the commands of his officer. This gave Emmet the 
opportunity to preach insubordination, a crime at that 
time unspeakable. He declared implicit obedience 
"degrading to human nature," and closed by drawing 
a vivid word picture of a soldier who at the behest of 
his superiors, had fallen in the ranks of the army of 
the oppressor rushing into the presence of his Maker 
with the pitiful exclamation, "Oh God, I know not 
why I have done this." 



ROBERT EMMET 211 

Gne more quotation will suffice as indicating the 
general trend of the college orations that subjected a 
mere boy to the espionage of a powerful government. 
In one of his speeches Emmet set forth the doctrine 
that had already become the dominating thought of 
his life: 

"When a people advancing rapidly in civilization and 
the knowledge of their rights look back after a long lapse 
of time and perceive how far the spirit of their govern- 
ment has lagged behind them, what then, I ask, is to be 
done by them in such a case ? What, but to pull the gov- 
ernment up to the people ?" 

It was inevitable that such doctrine, advanced with 
such marvelous eloquence and effect, should make a 
profound impression outside the college and elicit the 
condemnatory frown of the authorities. The faculty 
was not in sympathy with the rebellious spirit of the 
student, and finally the plan was devised of sending a 
much older man of great ability into the debating so- 
ciety to answer Emmet. This was the highest tribute 
that the government could pay. No, not the highest, 
but that also was reserved for him. Late in the year 
1797 the Fellows of the college, acting no doubt upon 
a suggestion from the Castle, determined to drive from 
the institution all the students responsible for the "dis- 
semination of treasonable doctrines. " In April of the 
following year came the infamous "visitation" to the 
university. The Earl of Clare, whose repulsive picture 
has been handed down to posterity in the famous 
characterization of Curran, very properly presided 
over the proceedings. Emmet was ordered to appear 
before the committee and divulge the names of all the 



212 THE IRISH ORATORS 

students suspected of being United Irishmen. Emmet 
an informer! The idea was grotesque. Nor was it 
expected that he would thus degrade himself. It was 
the intention to base his expulsion on his anticipated 
refusal. But again the committee had failed to gage 
its man. The young orator after a consultation with 
his father sent a letter of refusal to appear in which 
he denounced the committee with the utmost scorn for 
attempting to degrade the students of Trinity to the 
repulsive level of informers and demanded that his 
name be stricken from the roll of students. Thus his 
career in college was not more luminous than his man- 
ner of leaving it. 

The expulsion of Emmet only made a stronger ap- 
peal to the imaginations of the students who were with 
few exceptions devoted to him. We have it from 
Charles Phillips, the orator, that "every one loved, 
every one respected him, and his fate made a profound 
impression on the university." His expulsion came too 
late — he had already sown the seed and it fell on fer- 
tile ground. 

It was early in the year of his expulsion that he 
espoused the principles of the United Irishmen, al- 
though the records fail to disclose that he ever became 
an active member of the organization. Doubtless he 
fed his rebellious mind while in college on the seditious 
philosophy heard at the meetings in his brother's house. 
No doubt he had reached the conclusion that only 
through force could the wrongs of his people be 
righted. This may be gathered from an incident in 
which Moore, the poet, figured while both were stu- 
dents at Trinity. An unsigned letter had appeared in 
the press denouncing the lord chancellor with a ferocity 



ROBERT EMMET 213 

that seemed almost an invitation to assassination. Its 
publication created a profound impression. It was 
the custom in those days for Emmet and Moore to take 
long strolls out into the country, and on one of these 
rambles the poet confided to his friend that he had 
written the letter. With ineffable gentleness, the orator 
expressed his pleasure at the patriotic sentiments, but 
coupled it with a regret that its publication had called 
attention to the political tendencies of the university 
just when the work of organization was favorably 
progressing. The poet assumed from this that Emmet 
had even then decided that the time for talk had passed 
and that the time to act had come. On another occa- 
sion when Moore was at the pianoforte playing Let 
Erin Remember the Days of Old, Emmet sprang to 
his feet and with flashing eyes, passionately exclaimed : 
"Oh, that I were at the head of twenty thousand men 
marching to that air.' , 

Thus at twenty, Robert Emmet was a revolutionist. 
His mind and heart had been centered on his country. 
The heroes who had died for her and slept in unconse- 
crated ground, instead of deterring him by the horror 
of their death and burial, inspired him with the spirit 
of emulation. His imaginative mind had found em- 
ployment in the writing of poetry during his college 
days, and while none of his poems is worthy of his 
fame, one, written on Arbor Hill, the site of a number 
of executions for treason, commands a melancholy 
interest in view of the fate of its author: 

"Unconsecrated is this ground, 
Unblessed by holy hands- 
No bell here tolls its solemn sound 
No monument here stands. 



214 THE IRISH ORATORS 

But here the patriot's tears are shed 
The poor man's blessing given — 
These consecrate the virtuous dead, 
These waft their fame to heaven." 

Such was the Robert Emmet of '98 — before he had 
attained his majority. A mere boy — and yet the bril- 
liancy of his eloquence had converted a conservative 
university into a hot bed of sedition, commanded the 
admiration of the metropolis, and sent a tremor 
through the occupants of the Castle. A mere boy — 
and yet he had sat in the council of the United Irish- 
men as they planned the fight for the freedom of Ire- 
land. A mere boy — and yet his dreams of leading an 
awakened people to the attainment of their liberty by 
the light of a victor's sword. A mere boy — and yet 
so old that the government issued a warrant for his 
arrest, and drove him in exile from the land of his 
nativity. 

II 

But was he of necessity an exile? The revolution 
of '98 with its resultant effects upon the family for- 
tunes of the Emmets, coupled with the fact that a war- 
rant had been issued for the arrest of Robert, justifies 
the assumption that his prolonged absence from Ire- 
land was not entirely of his own volition. The failure 
of the government to execute the warrant when it had 
the youthful suspect within its power is one of the 
mysteries that has not been solved. After the arrest 
of Robert's insurrectionary brother and his incarcera- 
tion at Fort George we see Robert journeying thither 
in the company of his sister-in-law; and after having 



ROBERT EMMET 215 

seen and conferred with his brother we find him going 
directly to the continent where his three years' sojourn 
will perhaps always be a mystery. We are assured 
that he spent the summer of 1800 in Switzerland, and 
that he later traveled through southern France and a 
short distance across the Spanish border, and ulti- 
mately settled in Paris. It is scarcely less than mar- 
velous that so little has been disclosed of his life in 
the French capital. He must have written many let- 
ters to his family and friends, but only a few of these, 
addressed to the Marquis de Fontenay in Ireland, have 
been rescued from oblivion. 

It is positively known that his original purpose in 
lingering in Paris was to await the liberation of his 
brother with whom he had practically determined to 
emigrate to the United States. Later developments 
in Ireland however altered his plans — and yet he re- 
mained in Paris. There have been many explanations 
offered for his continued presence there. It has been 
suggested that he was acquainted with the plans and 
purposes of the members of the United Irishmen who 
had escaped detection and arrest and that his position 
in France was in the nature of an unofficial plenipo- 
tentiary through whom the rebellious organization 
communicated with Napoleon as to the feasibility of 
an invasion of Ireland. We know positively that he 
did succeed in getting an audience with Napoleon, that 
he was afterward in conference with Talleyrand on 
several occasions, and that he was not favorably im- 
pressed with either. He doubted the disposition of 
either the dictator or his diplomatic adviser to serve 
the Irish in the way desired, although he was persuaded 
that Talleyrand was not adverse to the establishment of 



216 THE IRISH ORATORS 

an independent republic in Ireland. The only solace 
that he appears to have found in his conferences with 
the French chiefs was the assurance that an early and 
lasting peace between France and England did not 
enter into the plans of Napoleon. 

Meanwhile he devoted his time to a careful study 
of military science, and numerous books on the sub- 
ject, bearing his marginal notes, are still extant. He 
doubtless clung to the hope that the evolution of 
events would one day place him at the head of the 
twenty thousand men suggested by Moore's playing 
of the inspiring Irish ballad. There is nothing au- 
thentic to justify the conclusion that anything more 
serious than his studies occupied his time during his 
residence in Paris. However it was inevitable that 
something of romance should have been woven out of 
the mystery that closed in about him, and the story 
has been told that he devoted a portion of his time to 
traveling about in various disguises in an effort to or- 
ganize the Irish exiles at that time living in France. 

The prospects for an immediate resuscitation of the 
insurrectionary movement in Ireland was exceedingly 
dark during the greater part of Emmet's residence in 
France. The authorities of Dublin Castle were ruling 
with an iron hand. The island was known to be honey- 
combed with spies and no man knew his brother. The 
procrastination and coldness of Napoleon held forth 
no promise of exterior assistance. The patriot's move- 
ment in Ireland lay broken and bleeding and seemingly 
doomed to die. It is this condition which makes all 
the more incomprehensible the sudden feverish anxiety 
of Emmet to return to his native isle and place himself 
at the head of a new rebellion. 



ROBERT EMMET 217 

While the whole truth will probably never be dis- 
closed there is every reason for asserting that some 
time during the latter part of his sojourn in Paris he 
was assured by unknown emissaries that Ireland was 
ripe for an uprising. The idea of the insurrection of 
1803 was not born in the brain of Emmet, but was 
planted there by persons who have never been exposed. 
He was undoubtedly trapped to his death. In seek- 
ing for a motive one has a right to take into consid- 
eration the conditions of the times as they related to 
Ireland's traditional foe across the channel. The ports 
of England were all but closed by Napoleon, whose 
fleets had very nearly annihilated the commerce of his 
island enemy, and the masses of the people, suffering 
in pride and purse, were in that restless, nervous, ir- 
ritable condition that governments find dangerous. 
The traditional specific for such domestic ills has al- 
ways been a counteracting excitement. It was mani- 
festly important to Pitt that something should be done 
to divert attention from the miserable fiasco that he 
had made of his war on France. It was just at this 
time that messengers were despatched to Paris carry- 
ing the word to Emmet that seventeen counties in Ire- 
land were prepared to rise in insurrection the moment 
a successful attempt should be made in Dublin. 

Who sent these men to Emmet ? 

Regarding this phase of the Emmet insurrection we 
are not left wholly without grounds at least upon 
which to base a conjecture. Many years after the 
young martyr had been in his unknown grave Doctor 
Emmet, who was working upon his Memoirs of the 
Emmet family, was granted permission to look over 
some state papers of the period of 1798 to 1804 that 



218 THE IRISH ORATORS 

were said to be among the London records. Upon 
investigation it was found that the papers desired had 
been transferred to Dublin to be investigated and prop- 
erly classified. At that time Sir Bernard Burke, Ul- 
ster king-at-arms, was in charge of these papers at 
Dublin Castle and the request of Doctor Emmet for 
permission to peruse them was denied, with the ex- 
planation that their dangerous nature had been called 
to the attention of the Duke of Marlborough, who 
had ordered them sealed, placed in a separate box and 
protected from the scrutiny of the world. This sealed 
box, with the order of the duke, was shown to Doc- 
tor Emmet. Time went on, and a personal friend- 
ship sprang up between Burke and Emmet, and Burke 
gave his friend an intimation of the character of the 
hidden papers. Among them were letters that were 
exchanged between the government at Dublin and the 
ministry of Pitt during the period immediately pre- 
ceding the union, in which the infamies of the meth- 
ods resorted to were shown to have been far worse 
than was imagined. 

The most startling revelations, however, related to 
the insurrection of 1803. Among the papers was a 
letter, which had been read by Burke, from William 
Pitt to Marsden, secretary in Ireland, instructing him 
to foment another insurrection and directing him to 
send messengers to Paris to approach Robert Emmet. 
Had such a project been possible to the brain of Pitt, 
the selection of Emmet, whose revolutionary tenden- 
cies were notoriously pronounced, whose enthusiastic 
credulity was well known, and who was even then 
under an indictment, would have been natural. These 
papers showed that governmental agents were sent to 



ROBERT EMMET 219 

Paris with misinformation; that upon Emmet's return 
the police facilitated his plans in every way, and that 
the government was thoroughly cognizant of every 
step he took from the moment of his arrival until the 
fateful hour. It is now a matter of history that Lord 
Hardwick, who was at the head of the Irish govern- 
ment, knew absolutely nothing about the proposed in- 
surrection until the very evening of the rising, while 
Marsden and McWickham, the chief secretary, had 
long been in full possession of information regarding 
it. The story related by Doctor Emmet and partly 
corroborated by history justifies the conclusion that 
Emmet was the victim of a Machiavellian plot, as 
dastardly as was ever incubated in the mind of a me- 
dieval despot. A few years after Doctor Emmet's 
conversation with Burke, and after the Whigs came 
into power, another effort was made to reach the pa- 
pers — but they were gone ! 

Of all this, however, Emmet was in blissful ig- 
norance. His last days in France were the most joy- 
ous of his existence. He foresaw, as he thought, the 
dawning day of retribution for Ireland. He saw him- 
self as he had seen himself in dreams, at the head of 
his twenty thousand men, marching to victory to the 
tune of Let Erin Remember the Days of Old. He 
saw the fruits of victory bursting from the soil that 
had been fertilized by the blood of the martyrs. A 
few days previous to his return home, while dining 
with Lord Cloncurry and discussing the wrongs of 
his country, his features glowed with enthusiasm and 
excitement, while the perspiration burst through the 
pores and ran down his forehead. And all the while 
the saturnine smile of statesmen, sailing under the col- 



220 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ors of Christianity, was fixed upon him, while cynic 
hands were engaged in the preparation of the grave 
to which was doomed the boy patriot and all his 
dreams. Confident, enthusiastic and happy, Emmet 
turned toward home. 



Ill 



On reaching his native isle Emmet hastened to Ca- 
sino, the beautiful country home of his father, and 
there he remained quietly for a short while. He is 
described as possessing handsome features and a gen- 
tlemanly appearance. He was about five feet eight 
inches in height, slight in person, though capable of 
great physical exertion and much endurance. His high 
broad forehead and small, bright and expressive eyes 
gave earnest of his mentality, the most striking of 
his features being his nose, which was remarkably thin 
and straight. At this time there was nothing in his 
manner to set him off from the crowd aside from the 
glow which emanated from him in moments of patri- 
otic excitation. 

He soon found himself surrounded by seeming sym- 
pathizers, who may be divided into three classes: the 
spies of the government, the fashionable young men 
about town who saw in his enthusiasm and credulity 
an opportunity to clothe and feed themselves, and the 
sincere followers of the revolutionary idea. 

He converted his own fortune into money, which 
was translated into pikes, guns and ammunition. In 
this last, at the critical hour, he was pitifully deficient. 
He established his depots, where he stored the muni- 
tions of war, and consulted with his emissaries. 



ROBERT EMMET, 221 

Buoyed up by his hopes, he was not wholly blind to 
the difficulties that beset his path. About this time 
he wrote : 

"I have but little time to look at the thousand diffi- 
culties that lie between me and the completion of my 
wishes. That those difficulties will likewise disappear I 
have ardent, and, I trust, rational hopes ; but if it is not 
to be the case, I thank God for having gifted me with a 
sanguine disposition. To that disposition I run from re- 
flection; and if my hopes are without foundation — if a 
precipice is opening under my feet from which duty will 
not suffer me to turn back, I am grateful to that san- 
guine disposition which leads me to the brink and throws 
me down, while my eyes are still raised to the visions of 
happiness that my fancy formed in the air." 

It was Emmet's plan to hold off the uprising until 
August on the theory that England would at that time 
be attacked on her own shores and would be rendered 
helpless in Ireland. The cruel fate that pursued his 
every movement intervened. An accidental explosion 
at one of his depots aroused the public curiosity and 
impelled him to advance the day of action. Plans 
were laid for July twenty-third. 

These plans contemplated the support of three hun- 
dred men from Wexford, four hundred from Kildare, 
two hundred from Wicklow — all of whom were vet- 
erans in insurrectionary war. In addition to these he 
counted upon the cooperation of at least three thou- 
sand in Dublin. He expected no less than two thou- 
sand men to assemble at Costigan's Mills — the rallying 
point. Then came the succession of heart-breaking 
disappointments. The financial aid promised failed of 
materialization. The fashionable young men about 



222 THE IRISH ORATORS 

town who had fattened on his credulous bounty slunk 
away, laughing in their sleeves. The men he sent out 
to buy guns kept the money and never returned. The 
Wicklow men failed to appear because of their officers. 
The men from Kildare, upon whom he particularly 
depended, came into Dublin the night before and left 
again because of a traitorous lie to the effect that the 
rising had been postponed. Owing to the confusion 
and the crowded condition of the main depot the fuses 
for the grenades, which had been laid aside, could not 
be found. Through an accident the slow matches that 
had been prepared were mixed with those that were 
not, and thus the labor went for naught. Little won- 
der that he cried out in the agony of his soul : "Had 
I had another week — had I had one thousand pounds 
'. — had I had a thousand men, I would have feared 
nothing.' ' 

At the appointed hour but eighty men were on hand. 
Postponement was no longer a matter of policy, but 
necessity. But here again fate— or was it treachery? 
— intervened. One of his men rushed excitedly into 
the depot shouting: "The soldiers are coming down 
upon us — we are lost." Postponement, a moment be- 
fore a necessity, was no. longer a possibility. 

The hour had come ! 

Calm, smiling confidently, Emmet hurriedly put on 
his green and gold uniform, ordered the distribution 
of arms, sent up a rocket to notify the people that 
the time had come for the attack upon the Castle, and 
at the head of eighty men he sallied forth, waving his 
sword and shouting: "Come on, boys, we'll take the 
Castle." A little way and the eighty had dwindled 
to eighteen. Then the army was augmented — it gath- 



ROBERT EMMET 223 

ered the denizens of the underworld, ever ready for 
an excuse to pillage and murder — it took unto itself 
the canaille from the drinking places. Down the street 
it moved, an undisciplined mass of impossible mate- 
rial. The gallant boy in his pathetic uniform of green 
and gold attempted vainly to bring order out of chaos. 
But alas! intoxication knows no commander. The 
army became a mob. The spirit of patriotism gave 
way to that of pillage — and the spirit of murder came 
to the surface. On marched Emmet, waving his sword 
— far in the lead — on toward the Castle. 

An old man, one of the noblest in Ireland, was 
pounced upon by the rabble, dragged from his carriage, 
pierced with pikes — and Lord Kilwarden's blood 
blotted the story of the insurrection. 

The valiant boy heard the frightful news and 
paused, disheartened. Hurrying back, he personally 
conducted the murdered peer's woman companion to 
a place of safety, and in the contemplation of the havoc 
wrought and the murderous mass of drunken men he 
read the failure of his dream. A word of exhortation 
to the mob, a plea that the crowd disband, and with 
a heavy heart Robert Emmet, with a few of his 
friends, turned and rode toward the green hills of 
Wicklow. 

And over the tragedy, which embraced the broken 
heart of Emmet, hovered the sinister smile of the 
Castle. 



IV 



He reached the fragrant hills of Wicklow in safety 
* — and just beyond spread the welcoming sea. No one 



224 THE IRISH ORATORS 

knew better the penalty of his capture, and yet he 
steadfastly turned a deaf ear to the importunities of 
his friends to avail himself of the opportunities to 
escape beyond the jurisdiction of Great Britain. Just- 
below him, in a little port within easy access, a fish- 
ing smack, under full sail, was anchored, and he was 
urged to save himself, but he refused to move. A 
few days after the fateful uprising Anne Devlin — of 
beautiful memory — was despatched to the retreat of 
the outlaws with letters for Emmet. She found him 
seated in an unconcerned manner upon the hillside, 
still wearing his uniform of gold and green. To her 
he confided the secret of his love for Sarah Curran, 
and his determination never to leave Ireland without 
at least having the opportunity to see her for the last 
time. With this in view he accompanied Anne on 
her return toward Dublin, leaving her just before 
reaching the fashionable suburb of the capital in which 
the Currans lived. 

The circumstances under which these two lovers 
first met are not positively known. The most reason- 
able story is to the effect that the brother of Sarah, 
who was a college mate, brought them together at The 
Priory. Certain it is that Emmet became a frequent 
visitor at the beautiful suburban place of the famous 
advocate, who was quick to comprehend his intellectual 
brilliancy. Not until within a comparatively short 
time before the insurrection did Curran become aware 
of anything unusual in the frequency of Emmet's vis- 
its. Until the very last he assumed that the youth 
was merely one of his own admirers. The first in- 
timation Curran had of the sentimental attachment 
between his daughter and the promising youth from 



ROBERT EMMET, 225 

Trinity came in the discovery of their love-letters by 
the authorities after his arrest. 

To write of Sarah Curran in a cold chronological 
manner is impossible. Her ardent and lasting devo- 
tion to her lover — a devotion which drove her penni- 
less from beneath her father's roof, and deified the 
memory of the martyr — deserves to take its place 
along with the classic passions of the centuries. She 
had inherited something of her father's genius, much 
of his temperament including his spirit and tendency 
to melancholy. We have a picture of her in her 
twelfth year, pensive, subdued, and with an intellectual 
development beyond her years. Hers had been a her- 
itage of sorrow. Under a great tree on the lawn of 
The Priory was the grave of a younger sister for 
whom she had entertained a deep affection. About 
this time occurred the tragedy which darkened and 
embittered her father's life — the elspement of her 
mother, to whom she was passionately attached. The 
great orator, who retained to the end a public geniality, 
became morose in the privacy of his home, more and 
more detached in sympathy from his family. 

It was about this time that she met Robert Emmet. 
She has been described as slight in figure and not tall, 
with the dark complexion and the large, dark eloquent 
eyes of her father, and with a look "the mildest, the 
softest and the sweetest you ever saw." We know 
from various sources that she had a beautiful sing- 
ing voice. The few letters that have been preserved 
indicate a brilliant mind. And that she had a heart 
that beat in ardent sympathy with the aspirations of 
the patriots of Ireland is shown by the encouragement 
she gave her lover. 



Z26 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Safe for the time in Wicklow hills, Emmet wrote 
to Sarah, urging her to join him and share his for- 
tunes in the land beyond the sea. The fact that she 
refused undoubtedly resulted in his apprehension and 
execution, and it was a realization of this which 
haunted her to her grave. Instead, she wrote him ten- 
derly of her duty to her father and her father's fame, 
and plead with him to seek his own safety in flight 
across the waters. At the very time that Emmet was 
trudging back from the Wicklow hills, under cover 
of the night, she was joyous in the assurance that he 
had reached the sea. She had not fathomed the depth 
of his devotion. Her letter only drew him back within 
the danger zone, and within a few days after the in- 
surrection Emmet was living in the house at Harold's 
Cross, situated between Dublin and The Priory. 
There he hoped to intercept Sarah on her way to 
and from the city. But he was doomed to fail- 
ure. Impatient of his failure, he summoned his 
faithful Anne and despatched her with a message to 
The Priory — and thus Sarah Curran was brought to 
a realization of what she had done. We have it on 
the word of the messenger that when these letters 
were slipped into her hand "her face would change 
so you would not know her." These letters, the pas- 
sionate confessions of two hearts, were destined to 
fall into the hands of the authorities — for the inevi- 
table spy was on the trail of the patriot. Just who 
the wretched informer was the world will never know. 
Through the sensitive sympathy of the Castle he has 
been permitted to escape the deep damnation of his 
infamy. He received the price of his dastardly act 



ROBERT EMMET 227 

but was spared publicity. Thus Robert Emmet was 
apprehended and hurried to his doom. 

In the gloom of his prison his thoughts were cen- 
tered, not upon his fate, but upon the unhappy girl 
at The Priory. His prison letters to her never reached 
their destination. 

"My love, Sarah," he wrote to her brother, "it was not 
thus I had hoped to requite your affection. I did hope 
to be a prop around which your affection might have 
clung, and which never would have been shaken; but a 
rude blast has snapped it, and it has fallen over a grave." 

Maddened by the thought that she had unconsciously 
lured her lover to his death, horrified at the suspicion 
the discovery of her letters had centered upon her 
father, and cringing pitifully under the scornful re- 
proach of her family, Sarah's mind suffered an eclipse. 
Thus, was she spared the terrors of the closing scenes. 
And when she emerged from the mental darkness that 
had mercifully closed in upon her, Robert Emmet had 
made his appeal "to time and to eternity and not to 
man." 

Her subsequent story has been touchingly told by 
Irving, in The Broken Heart, and Tom Moore has 
immortalized her ineffable sorrow in the exquisite 
lines, She Is Far from the Land Where Her Young 
Hero Sleeps. After a little while she gave her hand to 
a gallant soldier who was worthy of' her, but only after 
having warned him that her heart was buried in the 
unconsecrated grave of her lover. Irving has given 
us a significant glimpse of her at a masquerade, where 
in the midst of the gaiety and frills she wandered 



228 THE IRISH ORATORS 

through the merry throng, insensible to their laughter, 
until at length she sat down on the steps of a plat- 
form and "began with the capriciousness of a sickly 
heart to warble a plaintive air." More touching still 
is the story of her visit to the studio of James Petrie, 
who had made a court-room sketch of Emmet. The 
little son of the artist was alone in the room when a 
lady entered, without observing him, and went over 
to the portrait. Lifting her veil, she stood a long 
while in unbroken silence, and then turning with an 
unsteady step, she passed to the opposite end of the 
room, where she pressed her head against the wall, 
while deep passionate sobs shook her slender form. 
A little while, and she, too, was gone. In the little 
graveyard at Newmarket she was buried and, like her 
lover, no monument marks the spot of her interment. 
Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran — they share in a 
common immortality. In the history of Ireland, 
blood-stained and yet beautiful, they are the Romeo 
and Juliet of its romance and tragedy. 



V 



In the little court room in Dublin a strange and mem- 
orable drama was enacted on the nineteenth of Sep- 
tember, 1803. The miserable wretches who had 
trapped the "son of the heart of Erin" designed to 
drop the curtain of oblivion upon the insurrectionary 
movement of Robert Emmet. The room was packed 
with the curious, and among them were many whose 
hearts beat in ardent sympathy with the defendant. 
There sat Lord Norbury, the dismal butcher of the 
crown, who was wont to charge against a patriot de- 



ROBERT EMMET 229 

fendant with all the savagery of a Jeffries, and beside 
him sat Mr. Baron George, and Mr. Baron Daly. It 
was a dramatic scene. The young defendant had only 
a little while before been a welcome guest in the most 
exclusive drawing-rooms of Dublin, and the metrop- 
olis was familiar with the marvelous eloquence of the 
Trinity student. The jury selected was typical of the 
times — a packed jury, a jury of blood-letters — a jury 
in perfect keeping with the dignity of the sycophant 
upon the bench. The attorneys for the defense had 
been assigned him, and among them, conspicuous by 
his absence, was the one majestic genius worthy of 
such a scene — John Philpot Curran. Deserted by his 
friends and compatriots, even one of the attorneys for 
the gallant boy in the dock turned out to be a traitor 
and a spy ! 

Mr. Standish O'Grady rose to open the indictment. 
The testimony for the prosecution was heard. The 
hour for the defense struck. Then rose one of the 
defendant's counsel with the announcement that no 
witnesses would be called for Emmet — and this on the 
direct orders of the defendant. More than that, no 
argument would be made. 

The audacious determination of the bey in the dock 
startled the spectators, startled the court, and jury, and 
alarmed the special prosecutor — who sprang to his 
feet. What ! Deprive Plunkett of an opportunity to 
curry favor with authority! Nay, Plunkett would 
speak. And Plunkett spoke. Spoke with the preci- 
sion and brilliancy that gave him his celebrity, and with 
the bitterness, acrimony and brutality that gave him 
his office later on. Not content with his marshaling of 
the undisputed facts he conjured up the memory of 



230 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Emmet's father with which to upbraid him, and closed 
with the memorable curse. 

It was now Lord Norbury's turn. He charged the 
jury with his accustomed rancor and brutality. 

It was now the cue for the packed jury and it 
shouted "Guilty." The attorney-general asked for the 
judgment of the court. It was now far into the night. 
The faint glow of the lamps threw a sepulchral gloom 
over the court room. The prisoner sat in his place un- 
moved, calm, apparently cold, gazing with curiosity 
first upon Plunkett, the apostate, and then upon Nor- 
bury, the butcher. The attorney for Emmet rose and 
requested that judgment be reserved for the morrow. 

"It is impossible to comply with the request," re- 
sponded O' Grady. Indeed, the attorney-general de- 
served credit for the moderation of his reply to a re- 
quest that must have seemed ludicrous to Norbury. 
Postpone judgment until the morrow ? And only ten 
o'clock now? Banish the thought — that would delay 
the decapitation of the prisoner until the day fol- 
lowing ! 

The drama was hastening to the curtain. The words 
of the clerk of the court were heard in the awed court 
room. 

"What have you therefore to say why judgment of 
death and execution should not be awarded against 
you according to law ?" 

With flashing eye Robert Emmet rose and stepped 
forward in the dock in front of the bench. 



"My lords," he began, in a clear steady tone, "as to 
why judgment of death and execution should not be 
passed upon me I have nothing to say; but as to why 



ROBERT EMMET 231 

my character should not be relieved from the imputations 
and calumnies thrown out against it I have much to say." 

Then followed the most remarkable speech that 
ever reverberated through a court room. It echoed 
through Ireland — it was destined to become as immor- 
tal as the spirit of liberty. It lifted Robert Emmet 
from the unconsecrated dust in which they laid him 
into the Pantheon of glory. 

The majestic roll of defiant eloquence caused an 
uneasy shuffling among the government functionaries, 
not accustomed to hearing the brutal truth thundered 
in their very ears in the very sanctuary of despotism. 
Walking rapidly about in the dock Emmet was pro- 
ceeding : 

"I wish that my memory and my name may animate 
those who survive me, while I look down with com- 
placency upon the destruction of that perfidious govern- 
ment which upholds its domination by the blasphemy of 
the Most High — which displays its power over man as 
over the beasts of the forest — which sets man upon his 
brother, and lifts his hand in the name of God against 
the throat of his fellow who believes or doubts a little 
more or a little less than the government standard — a 
government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of 
the orphans and the tears of the widows that it has 
made." 

At this Norbury could no longer restrain his innate 
brutality. He broke in upon the speaker with a de- 
nunciation of the "mean and wicked enthusiasts" who 
felt the patriotic passion that was pouring in immortal 
eloquence from the lips of the doomed boy. Unruf- 
fled and undisturbed by the interruption, Emmet went 



232 THE IRISH ORATORS 

on. There was no contrition in the words he uttered 
— naught but exaltation. 

"Yes, my lords," he said with a smile, "a man who 
does not wish to have his epitaph written until his coun- 
try is liberated will not leave a weapon in the power of 
envy; nor a pretense to impeach the probity which he 
means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny 
consigns him." 

Again Norbury cringed at the mention of tyranny, 
and another attempt was made to interrupt the flow 
of eloquence that could not but leave a profound im- 
pression upon posterity. Paying no heed to the inter- 
ruption Emmet proceeded : 

"What I have spoken was not intended for your lord- 
ship, whose position I commiserate rather than envy — 
my expressions were for my countrymen; if there is a 
true Irishman present, let my last words cheer him in 
the hour of his affliction — " 

Beside himself with impotent rage Norbury again 
broke in with the angry assertion that he did not sit 
there to hear treason uttered. 

"I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge 
when a prisoner has been convicted," said Emmet re- 
proachfully, "to pronounce the sentence of the law; I 
have also understood that judges sometimes think it their 
duty to hear with patience and speak with humanity." 

The "butcher of the crown," now too furious for 
utterance, sank back in his chair while the orator con- 
tinued with a denunciation of the government of Ire- 
land which was destined to echo for a century in the 



ROBERT EMMET 233 

cottages of the Irish exiles throughout the world. He 
walked rapidly in front of the railing before the bench 
and looked Norbury in the eye, and then retired as 
though "his body as well as his mind was swelling be- 
yond the measure of his chains." With his left hand 
outstretched he struck the palm time and again with 
the two forefingers of his right hand to add emphasis 
to his rebuke. 

"As men, my lord, we must appear at the great day 
at one common tribunal, and it will then remain for the 
searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who 
was engaged in the most virtuous actions, or actuated by 
the purest motives — my country's oppressors, or — " 

Pricked beyond endurance with the prodding of the 
orator, Norbury again broke in with the brutal de- 
mand that the doomed man cease. With flashing eyes 
and a scornful curl of the lip Emmet suggested that 
the form of the law that prescribed that he be asked 
why sentence should not be pronounced also prescribed 
an answer. 

"This no doubt may be dispensed with," he said, "and 
so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence 
has already been pronounced at the Castle, before your 
jury was empaneled; your lordships are but the priests 
of the oracle, and I submit; but I insist on the whole 
form." 

Thus rebuked by one who knew his rights and pro- 
posed to maintain them in the face of power, Norbury 
impatiently demanded that the orator proceed. For a 
while he was unmolested as he entered his indignant 



234 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



denial of the charges made relative to his attitude to- 
ward French intervention. 



"France," he exclaimed, "even as an enemy, could not 
be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom 
of the country." 

Again Norbury burst forth with a demand that the 
prisoner cease with his treasonable utterances, only to 
receive upon his own head a bitter denunciation for 
his pains. Unchecked in his course, Emmet went on 
with his excoriation only to be interrupted time and 
again. 

"But you, too," he charged, "if it were possible to col- 
lect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your 
unhallowed ministry in one great reservoir, your lordship 
might swim in it." 

Hopeless now of throwing Emmet into confusion by 
his brutal interruptions, and anxious for him to close, 
Norbury sank back in his chair disgusted. Emmet 
went on. The lamp in the room began to flicker, and, 
with his eyes upon it, the gallant youth found the in- 
spiration for his peroration — a peroration more fa- 
mous perhaps than any that ever before or since has 
fallen from the lips of man. 

"My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice — the 
blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial 
terrors which surrround your victim; it circulates warm 
and unruffled through the channels which God created 
for noble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, 
for purposes so grievous that they cry to heaven. Be 
yet patient. I have but a few words more to say. I 



ROBERT EMMET 235 

am going to my cold and silent grave; my lamp of life 
is nearly extinguished ; my race is run ; the grave opens 
to receive me and I sink into its bosom. I have but one 
request to ask on my departure from this world — it is 
the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph : 
for, as no man who knows my motives dares now vindi- 
cate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. 
Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my 
tomb remain uninscribed until other times and other men 
can do justice to my character; when my country takes 
her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not 
until then, let my epitaph be written." 

As he sat down the flickering lamp went out ! 

It was now almost eleven o'clock, and Norbury zeal- 
ously pronounced the sentence of death. A woman, 
unknown to the authorities, hurried forward and 
pressed a sprig of lavender into the doomed man's 
hands. He was pounced upon by officers and the sprig 
was torn from him. Thus, insulted even on the brink 
of the grave, he was hurried from the court room, in 
which Pitt had consummated another of his designs 
against the liberty of man, and consigned to prison to 
await the morrow. 

But the speech was not forgotten. Torn from con- 
tact with the world and helpless to defend himself, the 
government, on the following day, hastened to issue its 
own version of the speech, a version intended to alien- 
ate from the Irish patriots the friendship of the 
French. 

It was a dismal procession that moved through the 
streets of Dublin to the place of execution. The 
doomed man was placed in a closed carriage. As he 
was driven slowly to his death, accompanied by a 
strong guard of infantry and cavalry, the spectators in 



236 THE IRISH ORATORS 

the streets stood in melancholy silence. Occasionally 
the martyr caught the eye of a friend and smiled his 
farewell. In his hand he carried a last message to 
Sarah Curran. He eagerly scanned the crowd for a 
sympathetic messenger. At length he beheld a com- 
passionate countenance, and at a sign from Emmet the 
friend rushed forward. The message was dropped 
from the window of the carriage, and the man caught 
it from the pavement. He was immediately seized 
and the last word of the doomed man to the woman 
that he loved was taken from him, and after being 
scanned by scoffing eyes, was destroyed. The pro- 
cession moved on. At length the carriage stopped at 
the foot of the scaffold. Emmet firmly ascended the 
platform. No sign of fear was betrayed in his coun- 
tenance. Turning to the crowd, his clear, strong, sil- 
very voice was raised in a few brief words of farewell. 
The work of death was quickly done. The head was 
immediately struck from the body. The hangman, 
who had trembled at his work, grasped it brutishly by 
the hair, and parading along the front of the gallows 
he shouted : 

"This is the head of a traitor, Robert Emmet." 
And thus, quite properly, they closed the dismal 
tragedy with a lying epilogue. 




VI 

DANIEL O'CONNELL 

The Fight for Catholic Emancipation; the Fight for the 
Repeal of the Union 

HEN Grattan achieved the legislative independ- 
ence of Ireland in 1782 he proclaimed the birth 
of "a nation." As a matter of fact Ireland did not 
begin to take on the dignity of a nation until the begin- 
ning of the second decade of the nineteenth century. 
The parliament of the days of Flood and Grattan rep- 
resented but an insignificant minority of the people 
and treated, either with hostility or contempt, the vast 
majority. This majority was Ireland. And this ma- 
jority was pitiably submerged, reduced by govern- 
mental action to a condition of pathetic subserviency. 
From the enactment of the penal laws, the Catholics 
of Ireland, constituting at least four-fifths of the popu- 
lation, were treated with less consideration by the rul- 
ing classes than the beasts of the fields. They had no 
rights that any one was bound to respect. Browbeaten, 
butchered, robbed, dispossessed, proscribed through 
centuries, this vast mass had become dispirited, and 
apathetic. 

Flood was a great patriot — but his patriotism con- 
templated the continued proscription and elimination 

237 



238 THE IRISH ORATORS 



of the overwhelming majority of his countrymen; 

Lord Charlemont was a magnificent character, big in 
everything but the bigotry which impelled him to op- 
pose all concessions to the Catholics; Henry Grattan 
would have taken his proscribed countrymen under the 
protection of the constitution, but his advocacy of their 
claims was tender of the prejudices of the Protestant 
minority, and while he won the commendation of the 
leaders of the majority, his leadership of the army of 
toleration failed to awaken the Catholic masses. The 
major part of the Irish people remained an inert mass 
— helpless, hopeless and afraid. 

Then a new leader appeared in Ireland to -awaken 
and move the sleeping people. His marvelous elo- 
quence gave them courage. His superb organizing ca- 
pacity converted the helpless mass into a militant force 
before which the empire trembled. He made The 
Irish Nation. 

And in the process of the making he commanded 
the attention and won the admiration of the world. 
He was the Mirabeau of the open spaces. His meet- 
ings have never been equaled in numerical greatness in 
the history of the world. He spoke to hundreds of 
thousands and his word was law. He created a public 
opinion that could not be put down by bullets or 
bayonets. He taught the world the possibilities of a 
peaceful revolution. He was the first great agitator. 
Wendell Phillips, the most potential agitator in Amer- 
ican history, has said that "the cause of constitutional 
government owes more to him than to any other polit- 
ical leader of the last two centuries." 

Such, in brief, is the historical status of Daniel 
O'Connell — one of the most impressive figures of all 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 239, 

time, one of the most fascinating characters in all 
history. 

I 

It seems peculiarly appropriate that even O'Connell's 
birth and youth should have been dramatic. He sprang 
from ancient stock and from battling blood. There is 
much of the heroic, the god-like, in the legendary story 
of his ancestry — a story stretching back into the most 
glorious days of Erin's history. One of his ancestors 
fought at the head of a regiment for James II, and 
only laid down the sword when the monarch fled the 
country and gave up the fight. An uncle was one of 
the dashing figures in the army of the French Bour- 
bons, and was loyal to the old regime when the holo- 
caust came. Indeed the O'Connells were a loyal brood 
— devoted to king and church. They had little in com- 
mon with the iconoclast. 

The birth of Daniel O'Connell took place at Car- 
hen, in the county of Kerry, on August sixth, 1775. 
Soon after his birth he was sent to the wife of his 
father's herdsman in the Iveragh mountains and there 
he remained for four years. His first impressions 
were of the wild life of the rugged hills and the simple, 
wholesome home of the mountaineer. It was while 
with the herdsman that Paul Jones, in command of 
three French vessels, arrived off the headlands of 
Kerry, and O'Connell's first recollection is of being 
taken by the herdsman to see some of the men. There 
was something dramatic in the situation which made 
an indelible impression upon the child whose life was 
to be a drama. Pottering, child-wise, about the rude 
cabin of his guardians, he learned to express his first 



240 THE IRISH ORATORS 

thoughts in the native Irish tongue. He spent his first 
four years in the heart of primitive Ireland — lulled to 
sleep with the beautiful legends of his race. 

That he was precocious, we may readily believe. 
We are told by his son that he learned his alphabet, at 
the age of four, in an hour, while seated on the knee 
of David Mahony, a hedge schoolmaster, who won his 
confidence and affection by combing his tangled locks 
without pulling. At nine he preferred books to play, 
and we have pictures of him absorbed by the hour in 
the reading of Cook's Voyages and in tracing out the 
voyages on the map. At the age of ten, according to 
Hamilton's biography, he composed a drama on the 
fortunes of the house of Stuart, and while it is not 
extant, we may feel assured that it was written after 
the most approved Jacobin fashion. We might dis- 
credit the story of this literary venture but for the 
fact that Daniel was morbidly ambitious for fame at 
an age when the average lad has no higher aspiration 
than to excel in childish sports. On one occasion, in 
his ninth year, his father was entertaining some friends 
at dinner, and the conversation turned upon the poli- 
cies and achievements of Flood, Grattan and Charle- 
mont. The absorbed and melancholy air of little Dan 
attracted attention. "What ails you, Dan?" his father 
asked. "I'll make a stir in the world yet," doggedly 
replied the child. 

Much of his childhood was spent amid the romantic 
scenery of Kerry, at Darrynane, the home of an uncle, 
and here he ran wild, a typical mountain boy, varying 
his excursions into the hills, with trips to some of the 
little islands near the mainland. His love for the 
mountains and the sea remained one of the passions of 




Daniel O'Connell 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 241 

his life. He narrowly escaped death in an effort to rid 
one of the islands of some wild bulls that terrified the 
people. Bubbling over with animal spirits, he sought 
adventure, and like a true son of Kerr}', he usually 
found it. 

In the spring of 1790 his father determined to send 
Dan and his brother to France to complete their edu- 
cation, but the unsettled conditions in that kingdom 
persuaded him to postpone their trip, and they were 
established for a while in a school near Cork, the first 
one to be opened by a priest after the relaxation of the 
barbarous penal laws. In the autumn, however, the 
father decided, contrary to the advice of his brother, 
then holding a commission in the French army, to send 
the boys to the famous school at Saint Omer's. The 
future liberator appears to have distinguished himself 
there. He studied Greek, Latin and French, composi- 
tion and geography, and to these studies he added 
fencing, dancing and music. He entered with enthusi- 
asm into the amateur theatricals of the college, and ap- 
pears to have enjoyed himself thoroughly. It is sig- 
nificant that he read, in the original, and translated the 
orations of Cicero and Demosthenes and Dugaro, the 
Frenchman. Louis Cavrios, in his story of O'Connell 
at Saint Omer's, tells us that he was noted while there 
for his religious temperament, his retentive memory, 
solid judgment, quick intelligence and wealth of iiriag- 
ination. The president of the college, in writing to the 
father of the progress of the two boys, gives a detailed 
account of the brother and dismisses Dan with the 
significant sentence — "I never was so much mistaken 
in my life unless he be destined to make a remarkable 
figure in society." 



242 THE IRISH ORATORS 

There is some mystery surrounding the transfer of 
the O'Connell brothers to the college at Douay. Dan 
seems to have been delighted with this institution. 
The times, however, were now out of joint in France. 
The specter of anarchy was stalking through the land 
and knocking at the door of authority. No educa- 
tional institution, with a religious foundation, was free 
from the possibility of attack. The boys at Douay 
were in constant fear that the revolutionaries would 
break in upon the school and massacre the students. 
A wagoner in the army of Dumouriez met Dan upon 
the road and abused him roundly as a "little aristo- 
crat." The conditions grew rapidly worse, and, on 
the day of the execution of the king, the two Irish lads 
started to Calais on their return to England. On the 
way their carriage was attacked by republicans who 
struck the vehicle with their muskets as they shouted 
"young priests" and "young aristocrats." The mem- 
ory of the incident clung to O'Connell throughout his 
life and his horror of the French Revolution and its 
participants had an important effect upon his political 
career. The moment he reached Calais and boarded 
the packet, he indignantly tore the tricolor from his 
cap and threw it into the sea, where it was rescued by 
some French fishermen who hurled their imprecations 
at him. It was then that he first learned of the execu- 
tion of the king. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that when he reached 
London and entered Lincoln's Inn for the study of 
law he was a pronounced reactionary, bitterly opposed 
to everything smacking of reform. Fortunately for 
his country and his kind his views underwent a radical 
change as a result of his attendance at the trial of 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 243 

Hardy, who was charged with treason. After a year 
in London he returned to Dublin and entered Lincoln's 
Inn, where he completed his professional preparation. 

Through Arthur Houston's Early Life and Journal 
of O'Connell we are permitted to follow the studies 
and mental processes of the future leader from 1795 
until 1802. The journal reveals an O'Connell not gen- 
erally known — a temperamental O'Connell consumed 
by an overweening ambition, given to self-deprecia- 
tion and condemnation, and driven on two occasions 
to the thought of self -slaughter. The man who was 
to make it the practise of his mature manhood to rise 
at four o'clock, is here found continually prodding 
himself for his sloth fulness and his disposition to lin- 
ger late in bed ; the future orator who was to electrify a 
world, scorned his own style as "shallow and not well 
thought out" ; the great apostle of peace and enemy of 
physical violence here records with no little pride his 
quarrel over a girl, and the resultant fight; he whose 
word was as good as most men's bond herein despises 
himself for his propensity to falsehood ; and the great 
agitator who was to ascribe the peace fulness of his 
monster meetings to the teachings of Father Matthew 
makes no secret in his journal of his participation in 
many a convivial spree. 

With all this there are many queer and amusing side 
lights on his character. He naively records the efforts 
of a wicked woman to entangle him in her net, and his 
escape; and tells us of his determination to go alone at 
night to a graveyard to demonstrate to his own satis- 
faction his incredulity of ghosts. His studies during 
this period indicate a serious trend of mind. He read 
Bos well's Johnson, beginning it with a scoffing refer- 



244 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ence and concluding with an expression of admiration. 
Condorcet's Life of Turgot, Plutarch's Lives, and 
Rousseau's Confessions figure in his biographical read- 
ing. He read Gibbon's Decline and Fall and found it 
advantageous in the improvement of his literary style. 
Among the poets he studied the plays of Shakespeare, 
the Paradise Lost of Milton, Johnson's London and 
Vanity of Human Wishes, the tragedies of Voltaire, 
Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, Cowley's 
Poems, and Ossian. It is interesting to find him read- 
ing Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and becoming 
converted to its enlightened doctrines. He confessed 
to a partiality for Lord Bolingbroke whose Answer to 
the London Journal and Vindication delighted him. 
He steeped himself in Grose's Antiquities of Ireland, 
and read the miscellaneous works of Hume, Gibbon 
and Voltaire. The most permanent and important im- 
pression of all seems to have been made upon him by 
Godwin's Political Justice, which had appeared but two 
or three years before, assailing monarchy, aristocracy 
and property, but opposing the methods of the French 
Revolution and contending that all real reforms must 
come through reason rather than force. This became 
the doctrine of his life, accounting for his disapproval 
of Emmet and the United Irishmen, and preparing the 
way for his break with the brilliant youths of Young 
Ireland. 

Running all through the journal is the undercurrent 
of ambition. "Sometimes," he wrote, " — and indeed 
this happens most frequently — I am led away by vanity 
and ambition to imagine that I shall cut a great figure 
on the theater of the world." 

That this thought of attaining celebrity was ever 



DANIEL O'CONNELU 245 

present in his subconsciousness may properly be de- 
duced from an incident connected with his desperate 
illness, in the early part of 1798, when he was stricken 
with a serious fever, as the result of falling to sleep in 
wet clothing in a peasant's hut after a hard morning's 
hunt. In his delirium he was heard to mutter the lines : 

"Unknown I die ; no tongue shall speak of me : 
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves, 
May yet conjecture what I might have proved ; 
And think life only wanting to my fame." 

He was in Dublin, exposed to all the perils of his 
ambition, in the beginning of the rebellion of '98. It 
is difficult to determine just how close he came to being 
affiliated with the United Irishmen. True he served 
as a private in the Lawyers' Corps, and his son tells 
us that he was bitter against the United Irishmen on 
the ground that they had prepared the way for the 
union. We are informed, however, in the biography 
of Sister Cusack, that on one occasion, while drinking, 
he was bent on joining the society and aiding in the 
enlistment of men, and was saved from thus compro- 
mising himself by the good offices of his host. 

Then again O'Neill Daunt, in his Recollections, 
quotes O'Connell as saying that he was a United Irish- 
man. However that may be, the fact remains that 
during the worst days of the rebellion he was safe 
among the mountains of Kerry, and was never sus- 
pected of complicity by the authorities of the Castle. 
In the year of the rebellion he began the practise of his 
profession, making his first appearance as a barrister 
at Limerick. His professional fame grew rapidly. His 
powers of advocacy and his genius for cross-examina- 



246 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tion made him one of the most remarkable criminal 
lawyers of his time. It was while on the circuit that 
the news of the carrying of the union reached him. He 
was traveling through the somber mountain district 
from Killarney to Kenmare and his heart was sad and 
heavy. The day was wild and gloomy, and great black 
clouds were sailing through the sky; the solitude and 
the sober grandeur of the mountains reflected his feel- 
ings as he rode on with the realization that his country 
had suffered an overwhelming calamity. Who knows 
but that he may, then, among the mountains, have 
formed the resolution which was to mold his destiny? 
He had not stood aloof from the fight to prevent the 
consummation of the tragedy which deprived his peo- 
ple of their parliament, and it was his participation, 
which marked his first appearance in the public affairs 
of Ireland. Pitt had attempted to bribe the Catholics 
into acquiescence by the promise of an amelioration of 
their condition, and the Castle disseminated the infor- 
mation that the Catholic majority looked with indiffer- 
ence upon the destruction of the parliament. To dis- 
prove the report O'Connell helped to organize a great 
meeting of the Catholics of Dublin to protest against 
the impending crime. Just as the meeting opened the 
red coats appeared at the door, and O'Connell, accom- 
panied by others, advanced to meet their officers, and 
by a bold front, succeeded in preventing the dispersal 
of the gathering. It was on that occasion that O'Con- 
nell said : 



"Let us show to Ireland that we have nothing in view 
but her good; nothing in our hearts but the desire of 
mutual forgiveness, mutual toleration and mutual affec- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 247 

tion; in fine, let every man who feels with me proclaim, 
that if the alternative were offered to him of union or 
the re-enactment of the penal code in all its pristine hor- 
rors, that he would prefer without hesitation the latter 
as the lesser and more sufferable evil ; and that he would 
rather confide in the justice of his brethren, the Protest- 
ants of Ireland, who have already liberated him, than lay 
his country at the feet of foreigners." 

Such was the liberator's introduction to public life. 
Henceforth, after a brief interval, we shall find him 
engaged continuously in battling for the emancipation 
of his people, and the independence of his country. 



II 



The political career of O'Connell may be divided 
into two distinct parts, one dealing with his long and 
successful fight for Catholic emancipation, the other 
with the spectacular and brilliant, though futile, fight 
for the repeal of the act of union. The recital, in de- 
tail, of all the important features of his fight for eman- 
cipation would require volumes, and the telling of 
the story consecutively would not serve the purpose 
of this study. Looking back over the twenty years of 
his miraculous leadership of his coreligionists we shall, 
instead, point out the principal features of his policy — 
a policy so brilliant both in its conception and execu- 
tion as to have pointed to all the world the way of 
great constitutional reforms. 

The leadership of O'Connell probably dates from 
about 1808 when he carried the Catholic committee 
with him in a disagreement as to policy with the ven- 
erable John Keogh. The death of Pitt, the inveterate 



248 THE IRISH ORATORS 

enemy of Ireland, in 1806, and the consequent triumph 
of the Whigs who had posed for years as the partic- 
ular champions of the Irish people, impelled many of 
the leaders in the cause of emancipation voluntarily to 
declare an armistice. It was their contention that the 
Whigs should not be embarrassed by the demands for 
emancipation until they should have had an opportu- 
nity firmly to fix themselves in the saddle. "Let's wait 
and see what they will do" — was the suggestion from 
this quarter. From another quarter came opposition 
to the policy of petitioning parliament for relief, year 
after year, regardless of the prospects of success. The 
foremost exponent of this idea was none less than 
John Keogh. He insisted that the Irish Catholics 
merely subjected themselves to needless humiliation 
and rebuff, and that more would ultimately be accom- 
plished by retiring from the contest and maintaining 
a "dignified silence." 

To one of O'Connell's assertiveness and combative- 
ness this idea seemed preposterous, and "dignified si- 
lence" spelt surrender. He contended that nothing 
would do so much toward disheartening and disorgan- 
izing the Catholics, and encouraging the English poli- 
ticians in the continuance of their traditional policy of 
oppression. The clash of the two ideas came in Jan- 
uary, 1808, when the committee met to determine upon 
the wisdom of preparing a petition. The followers of 
Keogh opposed the petition on the grounds just indi- 
cated, and on the further ground that the meeting had 
been hastily called without giving the people an oppor- 
tunity to express their views. The more aggressive 
element met these objections with the eloquence of 
O'Connell, who showed that the people had been inter- 



DANIEL O'CONNELU 249 

rogated by letter, that the demand for a petition was 
overwhelming and unmistakable, and that if the Cath- 
olics of Ireland stood firm and presented a solid front 
they would have nothing to fear from the "barren pet- 
ulance of the ex-advocate Percival," or the "frothy 
declamation of the poetaster Canning" or the "pom- 
pous inanity of Lord Castlereagh, who might well be 
permitted to hate the country that gave him birth to 
her own annihilation." This speech, by its enthusiasm 
and eloquence, swept the committee away from the 
conservatism of Keogh and into the control of the 
younger and greater man. From that hour, for more 
than twenty years, the greater part of the burdens of 
leadership rested upon the broad shoulders of the man 
from Kerry. 

Never perhaps during a single hour of the two 
decades that followed did he waver in his faith. In 
season and out of season he labored in the cause, at 
times bearing the entire expense of the propaganda, 
at all times arranging the meetings, attending to the 
voluminous correspondence, preparing the resolutions, 
organizing the petitions, arousing the masses by his 
Mirabeauan eloquence, protecting his people against the 
snares of the law, and, in the darkest periods, sustain- 
ing the fainting spirits of the faithful with an optimism 
and spirit that was contagious. In the contemplation 
of his career the casual reader may conclude that the 
secret of his success was the witchery of his eloquence. 
A closer view, however, reveals him as one of the most 
astute and consummate politicians in the world's his- 
tory. He saw clearer and further than most men. He 
knew by intuition the psychological moment for action. 
He was a master opportunist. He kept his fingers 



250 THE IRISH ORATORS 

upon the pulse of public opinion— and thus he directed 
sentiment, mastered sentiment, created sentiment. 

Throughout the fight he never faltered in the faith 
that continual agitation was essential to ultimate suc- 
cess. When the charge was made in 1812 that the 
Catholics had injured their cause by their activity and 
persistency he indignantly replied : 

"But our tone is disliked— yes, my lord, they dislike 
the tone which men should use who are deeply anxious 
for the good of their country, and who have no other 
object. We are impressed with a sense of the perils that 
surround us, and of all the calamities impending on a 
divided and distracted people. We see our own re- 
sources lavishly squandered upon absurd projects, whilst 
our tottering paper currency is verging fast to bank- 
ruptcy—the fate of every other paper currency that ever 
existed. We see the private ruin that must ensue, the 
destruction of the funded system. We see the most for- 
midable military force arrayed on the continent. The 
emperor of the European world is now busied with some 
quarrel on the northern frontier, which now extends to 
the suburbs of St. Petersburg; his fleet augments by the 
month ; who shall dare to say that we shall not have to 
fight on our own shores for the last refuge of civil lib- 
erty m this eastern world. What blindness, what infat- 
uation, not to prepare for that event. 
^ "We, my lord, assume the tone that may terrify the 
invader ; we use the tone of men who appreciate the value . 
of civil liberty, and who would die sooner than exchange 
it for the iron sway of military rule. We talk as men 
should who dread slavery and disgrace, but laugh to scorn 
the idea of danger. Shall it be asked if the invader ar- 

f"|-lTQ/-l 



rived — 



"And were there none — no Irish arm, 

In whose veins the native blood runs warm ? 

And was there no heart in the trampled land, 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 2il 

That spurned the oppressor's proud command ? 
Could the wronged realm no arm supply, 
But the abject tear and the slavish sigh? 

"Why yes, my lord, we are told that if we had been 
servile and base in our language, and dastardly in our 
conduct, we should be nearer success ; that the 'slavish 
tear' and the 'abject sigh' would have suited our dignity; 
that, had we shown ourselves prone to servility and sub- 
mission, and silent in oppression, we should advance our 
emancipation; and that by proving, by our words and 
actions, that we deserve to be slaves — we should insure 
liberty." 

Thus did he push forward, scornfully brushing aside 
every suggestion of an armistice. This was something 
entirely new for English politicians who had been ac- 
customed to sporadic agitation on Irish subjects. The 
primary explanation of O'Connell's success in agita- 
tion was that he kept everlastingly at it. 

The fiercest and most vital opposition he encoun- 
tered in his leadership in the matter of policy grew out 
of the historic contest regarding the "veto" or "se- 
curities." The pretended friends of concession, in 
England, assumed to fear that the unqualified emanci- 
pation of the Catholics, without securities of any char- 
acter as to the personnel of the Irish churchmen, would 
be dangerous to the empire and fatal to the established 
church in Ireland. It was proposed that the govern- 
ment should possess the power of veto over the ap- 
pointment of the bishops. This proposition was acqui- 
esced in by the parliamentary leaders of the Catholic 
cause, who received their cue largely from the laity of 
the upper class who were ready to accept anything 
smacking of a concession, and were unable to see that 



252 THE IRISH ORATORS 

certain concessions were remedies equal to the disease. 
During the summer of 1812, following the failure of 
the motion to consider the claims in the house of lords, 
by just one vote, the bigots of England took alarm, 
and began a counter agitation of the most virulent na- 
ture. The "No-Popery" cry was heard all over Eng- 
land, the London press became especially vicious in 
its intolerance, and every encouragement was held out 
to the organization of Orange societies in Ireland. 
The indications pointed to a period of religious perse- 
cution, and the Catholics, thoroughly aroused, held 
numerous meetings over the country. Not only were 
the people apprehensive of persecution, but they found 
an even greater occasion for alarm in the rumor that 
the government was preparing, in connection with the 
proposed relief bill, some such plan of ecclesiastical 
interference as the veto. 

In one of his great popular speeches at Limerick, 
O'Connell met the danger on the road and challenged 
it with a boldness that contributed largely to the mold- 
ing of public opinion. 

"And can there be any honest man," he said, "deceived 
by the cant and cry for securities? Is there any man 
that believes that there is safety in oppression, contumely 
and insult, and that security is necessary against protec- 
tion, liberality and conciliation? Does any man really 
suppose that there is no danger from the continuance 
of unjust grievances and exasperating intolerance, and 
that security is wanting against the effects of justice and 
perfect toleration? Who is it that is idiot enough to 
believe that he is quite safe in dissension, disunion and 
animosity, and wants a protection against harmony, be- 
nevolence and charity? — that in hatred there is safety, in 
affection ruin? — that, now that we are excluded from 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 253 

the constitution, we may be loyal; but that if we were 
entrusted personally with its safety, we would wish to 
destroy it ? 

"But this is a pitiful delusion. There was indeed a 
time when sanctions and securities might have been 
deemed necessary; when the Catholic was treated as an 
enemy to God and man ; when his property was the prey 
of legalized plunder; his religion, and its sacred minis- 
ters, the object of legalized persecution; when, in defi- 
ance and contempt of the dictates of justice and the 
faith of treaties — and I attest the venerable city in which 
I stand that solemn treaties were basely violated — the 
English faction in the land turned the Protestant into 
an intolerant and murderous bigot, in order that it might 
in security plunder that very Protestant, and oppress his 
and our common country. Poor neglected Ireland ! At 
that period securities might be supposed wanting; the 
people of Ireland — the Catholic population of Ireland — • 
were then as brave and strong, comparatively, as they 
are at present ; and the country then afforded advantages 
for the desultory warfare of a valiant peasantry, which, 
fortunately, have since been exploded by increasing cul- 
tivation. 

"At the period to which I allude the Stuart family was 
still in existence; they possessed a strong claim to the 
exaggerating allegiance and unbending fidelity of the 
Irish people. Every right that hereditary descent could 
give the royal race of Stuart, they possessed — in private 
life, too, they were endeared to the Irish, because they 
were, even the worst of them, gentlemen. But they had 
still stronger claims on the sympathy and generosity of 
the Irish: they had been exalted and were fallen; they 
had possessed thrones and kingdoms, and were then in 
poverty and humiliation. All the enthusiastic sympathies 
of the Irish heart were roused for them; and all the 
powerful motives of personal interest bore, in the same 
channel, the restoration of their rights — the triumph of 
their religion, the restitution of their ancient inheritances 
would then have been the certain and immediate conse- 



254 THE IRISH ORATORS 

quences of the success of the Stuart family in their pre- 
tensions to the throne. 

"At the period to which I allude the Catholic clergy 
were bound by no oath of allegiance; to be a dignitary 
of the Catholic church in Ireland was a transportable 
felony — and the oath of allegiance was so mingled with 
religious tenets that no clergyman or layman of the Cath- 
olic persuasion could possibly take it. At that period 
the Catholic clergymen were all educated in foreign coun- 
tries, under the eye of the pope, and within the inspec- 
tion of the house of Stuart. From fifty-eight colleges 
and convents on the continent did the Catholic clergy re- 
pair to meet, for the sake of their God, poverty, perse- 
cution, contumely and not infrequently death, in their na- 
tive land. They were often hunted like wild beasts and 
never could claim any protection from the law. That, 
that was a period when securities might well have been 
necessary, when sanctions and securities might well have 
been requisite. . . . 

"How do I prove the continued loyalty of the Catholics 
of Ireland under every persecution ? I do not appeal for 
any proofs to their own records, however genuine ; I ap- 
peal merely to the testimony of their rulers and their en- 
emies. I appeal to the letters of Primate Boulter — to 
the state papers of the humane and patriotic Chesterfield. 
I have their loyalty through the admissions of every sec- 
retary and governor of Ireland, until it is finally and con- 
clusively put on record by the legislature of Ireland itself. 
The relaxing statutes expressly declare that the penal 
laws ought to be repealed, not from motives of policy 
or growing liberality, but (I quote the words) 'because 
of the long continued and uninterrupted loyalty of the 
Catholics.' This is the consummation of my proof — and 
I defy the veriest disciple of the doctrine of delusion to 
overturn it." 

Notwithstanding the popular sentiment against the 
securities, when Grattan submitted his Relief bill to 
parliament in 1813 these were incorporated. When it 



DANIEL O'CONNELE 255 

passed the house in its preliminary stages the people 
of Ireland were at loss whether to rejoice over the 
growing liberality of the English or to lament the pres- 
ence of the humiliating veto. But when it was finally 
fatally emasculated, by the elimination of the clause 
granting the right to sit in parliament, and was conse- 
quently withdrawn, O'Connell openly rejoiced. The 
prelates of Dublin had met and passed resolutions con- 
demnatory of the bill with its securities and at the 
next meeting of the Catholic board, O'Connell took 
advantage of the opportunity to return to the attack. 
This he did by showing the probable character of the 
commission provided for in the bill to sit in judgment 
on the church affairs of the Catholics. His proposal 
of a vote of thanks to the prelates brought on a debate 
in which Councilor Bellew defended the "securities." 
This called forth from O'Connell a stinging rebuke : 

"But, said their learned advocate, they have a right to 
demand, because they stand in need of securities. I deny 
the right — I deny the need. What security have they 
had for a century that has elapsed since the violation 
of the treaty of Limerick ? What security have they had 
during these years of oppression and barbarous and 
bloody legislation? What security have they had whilst 
the hereditary claim of the house of Stuart remained? 
. . . What security had the English from our bishops 
when England was invaded and the unfortunate but gal- 
lant Prince Charles advanced into the heart of England, 
guided by valor and accompanied by a handful of brave 
men who had, under his command, obtained more than 
one victory ? He was a man likely to excite and to grat- 
ify Irish enthusiasm; he was chivalrous and brave; he 
was a man of honor and a gentleman, no violator of his 
word ; he spent not his time in making his soldiers ridicu- 
lous, with horsetails and white feathers ; he did not con- 



256 THE IRISH ORATORS 

sume his mornings in tasting curious drams, and eve- 
nings in gallanting old women. What security had the 
English then ? What security had they against our bish- 
ops and our laity when America nobly flung off the yoke 
that had become too heavy to be borne, and sought her 
independence at the risk of her being? What security 
had they then? I will tell you, my lord. The security 
at those periods was perfect and complete, because it ex- 
isted in the conscientious allegiance of the Catholics ; it 
consisted in the duty of allegiance which the Irish Cath- 
olics have ever held and will, I trust, ever hold sacred ; 
it consisted in the conscientious submission to legitimate 
authority, however oppressive, which our bishops have 
always preached and our laity have always practised." 

The Bellew to whom O'Connell replied, was a type 
all too well known in the history of Ireland. At the 
time he spoke in favor of the securities he was receiv- 
ing two pensions from the government, and within 
two weeks after the debate with O'Connell he was re- 
warded with a third ! However triumphant O'Connell 
may have been in his contests on the board, he was not 
the man to rest his case with a few if he could appeal 
to the many; and his opportunity to appeal to the 
many came in June, 1813, at a great aggregate meet- 
ing in the Fishamble-Streek theater where resolutions 
demanding unqualified emancipation were offered and 
unanimously carried. 

While the views of O'Connell met with general ap- 
probation, the fight over the securities continued with 
unabated fury, and in the autumn of 1813 the advo- 
cates of the veto found their most brilliant and plausi- 
ble champion in Richard Lalor Sheil, who opposed a 
resolution against the securities offered at a board 
meeting. It was the first notable appearance of the 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 257 

amazing genius whose exceptional possibilities were 
immediately recognized by the liberator. One of the 
secrets of the success of his leadership was his perfect 
appraisement of men, and his utter lack of jealousy. 
In his brilliant reply to Sheil he was careful to compli- 
ment the young orator upon his capacity and promise 
and to offer him a position of leadership in the army 
of unconditional emancipation. We see a little later 
on, the harvest from the seed of conciliation thus sown. 

When it was learned, in 1814, that Grattan declined 
to present the Catholic petition with the injunction of 
"no securities," O'Connell, instead of weakening in his 
faith, became, if anything, more insistent in his deter- 
mination to win unqualified emancipation or none 
at all. 

The refusal of O'Connell to compromise on the se- 
curities or to concede the,4eadership of Grattan in the 
matter only intensified the fight during the year 1814. 
The advocates of the securities made a strenuous ef- 
fort to turn the tide of public opinion at a great meet- 
ing in the county Clare, where Chief Baron Woulfe, a 
man of unusual ability, delivered a carefully prepared 
speech in which, among other things, he accused 
O'Connell of having made an attack upon Grattan. 
The reply of O'Connell on this occasion was in his 
best "mob" style — as Lecky would have called it. He 
indignantly denied the least abuse of Grattan, but de- 
clined to be diverted from the issue, and in an analysis 
of the bill which was defeated, he showed that it would 
have compromised the religion of the Catholics, and 
destroyed the liberty of the people ; the one by convert- 
ing the prelates into subservient defenders of the gov- 
ernment, the other by forcing these political prelates 



258 THE IRISH ORATORS 

into becoming the electioneering agents of the govern- 
ment against the liberties of the subject. 

Then came the bomb into the camp of the O'Con- 
nellites ! 

During the captivity of the pope, a message came 
from Rome, signed by Monsignor Quarantotti, vice- 
prefect of Rome, assenting to the securities. This was 
a staggering blow — but it did not daze O'Connell. In- 
stantly and indignantly he repudiated it. However, it 
had its effect and partly disarmed him. Quick on its 
heels came the abolishment of the Catholic board by 
the government. The year came to a close in gloom. 
In the drawing-room meetings, that followed the pro- 
scription of the board, he continued the struggle — and 
unfortunately the drawing-room type of agitator was 
all too prone to compromise. In the summer of 1815, 
when the question arose as to whom the Catholic peti- 
tion should be entrusted in parliament, he successfully 
contended that a committee should be sent to London 
to find some Englishman who would stand sponsor for 
a petition containing the "no security" injunction. 
Two months later he won his long drawn battle when 
the prelates of Ireland took their position unqualifiedly 
and finally against any form of security which would 
in any way interfere with the discipline or organiza- 
tion of the church. 

In his fight in favor of constant action and vigorous 
agitation O'Connell had prevailed over John Keogh — 
the early leader of the Irish Catholics. In his battle 
against the securities, he overthrew the power of the 
Catholic aristocracy, and supplanted Grattan and Plun- 
kett in the acknowledged leadership of the Irish people. 
By sheer force of intense conviction he fought his way 



DANIEL Q'CONNELi: 259 

to leadership. The burden was now upon him. Defeat 
would be ascribed to his mistakes, and success would 
be his triumph. We shall now note his methods of 
leadership — the various strategies by which he forced 
the movement forward to ultimate victory. 



Ill 



One of the most noticeable features of his policy 
was his effort to conciliate and enlist the services of 
the liberally inclined Protestants of Ireland. It is well 
to bear in mind in the study of the career of O'Con- 
nell that throughout the twenty-year struggle for the 
emancipation of his coreligionists he had in mind the 
restoration of the parliament of Ireland. He knew 
that emancipation was a necessary means to the end 
— the repeal of the union. Thus he did everything 
within his power to break down the barriers of big- 
otry in Ireland and to consolidate the people of all re- 
ligions into an aggressive and united nationality. 
Thus in 1813, when the Catholics of Dublin prepared 
their petition to parliament, he entrusted its composi- 
tion to the gifted young Protestant, Charles Phillips* 
— and then he proclaimed and eulogized the author. 
When, in the spring of 1811, the Catholics gave a din- 

* Charles Phillips was a remarkable genius, a graceful poet, a 
successful lawyer, a clever writer, and a brilliant orator whose 
speeches were marred by over-adornment. His speeches pub- 
lished in his twenty-ninth year called down upon him the sar- 
castic criticisms of the reviewers, and while he lived to a ripe 
old age and became a leader of the Old Bailey Bar of London 
and a jurist, he never afterward published his speeches. His 
tribute to Washington at banquet and his character sketch of 
Napoleon are little masterpieces and have survived. His Rem- 
iniscences of Curran, written in three weeks, is a fascinating 
work. 



260 .(THE i IRISH ORATORS 

ner to some of their Protestant supporters in Dublin, 
O'Connell said : 



"This, I believe, is the first time Catholics and Protest- 
ants have publicly assembled at the festive board — alas, 
the first time we have sought access to each other's hearts. 
If such meetings shall frequently take place, and I trust 
in God they will, it is impossible that your great and 
ancient nation — your nation famed for every physical 
good which can make existence valuable, and which has 
given birth to the best and the bravest of the human 
race — it is impossible, I say, that any minister can tyr- 
annize over you, or any foe effect your subjugation. If 
the spirit shall go abroad which pervades this meeting, 
it is not too much to expect that your enfranchisement 
is at hand; that your parliament must be restored. As 
it is the habit of men who follow my trade to talk much, 
you may, perhaps, fear that I trespass on your attention ; 
but I shall be brief. A bigot — be he of what profession 
he may, whether Catholic or Protestant; of what rank 
soever, whether monarch, peer or peasant; whether his 
brow is encircled with a diadem or his body enveloped 
in rags — is a bigot to me. Louis XIV disgracefully 
treated a brave and skilled warrior, Admiral Duchesne, 
because he was a Protestant ; and Louis XIV was there- 
fore an outrageous bigot. Our gracious prince, who is 
the parent of his Irish people, has given an earnest of 
what we may expect from him by refusing to comply 
with the corrupt requisition of a minister; he will unite 
us and therefore have, instead of one regiment of his 
own Irish, an entire nation." 

Some time after this, at a dinner given to the 
Friends of Religious Liberty, where Henry Grattan, 
John Philpot Curran and Sir Henry Parnell were 
among the guests, O'Connell made an even stronger 
appeal for support of the liberal Protestants : 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 261 

"You have, my Protestant brothers," he said, "an in- 
terest in the hearts, and a control over the hands, of one 
million of men — as brave and hardy a race as ever the 
world saw; let the enemy come when he may, your lib- 
erality will recruit a mass of unbought millions. I have 
the honor of bearing my very humble testimony to the 
worth of our noble chairman, who has been ever upright 
and consistent. The life and blood and spirit of every 
Catholic in Ireland is with him. Having briefly given 
my genuine sentiments, I wish that the recollection of 
this day should never be erased from your memories. 
Nor should the remembrance of our friends present be 
ever lost. The day, the persons and the occasion of meet- 
ing should be immortalized. ... I would scorn eman- 
cipation if it were to injure the poorest of my Protestant 
countrymen. Let any man prove to me that Catholic 
emancipation can be detrimental to the meanest member 
of the established church, and I will cheerfully consent 
to forego it. The principle which has given aid to Spain 
and Portugal should be extended to Ireland. That spirit 
which God has given the human mind can not be ex- 
tinguished by human efforts ; and for man to interfere 
with it is a flagrant act of impiety." 

Again, in 1819, at a great Catholic meeting in Dub- 
lin, with the Earl of Fingal in the chair, O'Connell, 
speaking to a resolution of thanks to the Protestants 
for their support, said: 

"But the happy, the glorious era which must be im- 
mortal in the history of Ireland has arrived — yes, had 
arrived, and is no longer to be wished for, when these 
odious and devastating distinctions were removed. Prot- 
estants have assembled and expressed their honorable 
feeling on the claims of their Catholic friends and breth- 
ren. The first Protestant nobleman of the country, the 
Duke of Leinster, one of whose ancestors was brought 
to the bar of the house of lords on the broad plea of 



262 THE IRISH ORATORS 

being more Irish than the Irish themselves/ whose diffi- 
dence became his youthful years — it was delightful to 
see him shaking off that diffidence which, if it continued, 
must impede his political career, and leading on that glo- 
rious array of Protestant benevolence : the Earl of Meath, 
always a friend and patron of Ireland; Charlemont, 
whose name is music to Irish ears; Grattan, whose elo- 
quence and virtue raised Ireland into independence and 
liberty — the old patriot, Grattan, who had given Ireland 
all she had, and would have made her all she ought to 
be. . . . Let Catholics continue to deserve, and Prot- 
estants to reward with their good wishes and confidence, 
and the motto of Ireland in future be — 'God and our na- 
tive land/ " 

It was with this idea of making a nation that he 
prevailed upon the Catholic board in 1813 to declare 
in favor of the exclusive consumption of articles of 
Irish manufacture. This policy was calculated to 
make a favorable impression upon the Protestant man- 
ufacturing interests of the north, and to impress upon 
the people the really national character of the agita- 
tion he was fostering. In view of the wretched con- 
ditions then existing in the manufacturing districts of 
Ireland, the Catholic board had assumed a sympathetic 
attitude toward the artisans who were unemployed. 
It was following this action of the board that O'Con- 
nell submitted his proposition in favor of Irish man- 
ufacture. 

"It is useless for the board to speak if it does not 
act," he said. "It would be guilty of a great crime in- 
deed if, after promising these poor people to find work 
for them, it were to content itself with the mere promise 
instead of the performance. With this impression upon 
my mind I am anxious to bring forward some measure 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 263 

which may give effect to the resolutions already passed. 
The cotton manufacturers, in particular, are suffering the 
extreme of misery. The present period of the year is 
that in which their fabrics may best be used ; and I have 
reason to know that if the sale of English goods were 
to be suspended but for one day in this city, and that of 
Irish substituted, there would not be a single piece of 
goods left on hands. It is idle for gentlemen to talk of 
public spirit and patriotism, or even of common human- 
ity, if the knowledge of such a fact as this does not in- 
spire them to deeds as well as words. Upon making 
up the annual accounts of the sale of cotton manufacture, 
it was clearly established that there is not so much of the 
Irish manufacture sold in the entire year as of the Eng- 
lish in one day. Can any person with Irish feelings lis- 
ten to this statement and refuse to make the slight sac- 
rifice of purchasing the work of his countrymen in 
preference to English manufacture, which he might sup- 
pose better or handsomer? But in point of fact it is 
not better or handsomer. The manufacture of all kinds 
of clothing has much improved under all the discourag- 
ing circumstances. What perfection may it not arrive 
at if it but receive the countenance of the inhabitants ? 
Instead of having it said 'It must be good because it is 
English/ I want it said 'It must be good because it is 
Irish/ " 



A characteristic of O'Connell's leadership was its 
strictly constitutional character and, consequently, its 
comparative immunity from the successful attacks of 
the Castle. The attempt to put down the Catholic 
committee at its meeting of February twenty-three, 
1811, by an order of dispersal from the Castle, was 
thwarted by the defiant insistence of the liberator that 
no law was being violated. The astonished official re- 
turned to the Castle with the message of O'Connell 
— and the meeting was not dispersed. Such incidents 



264 THE IRISH ORATORS 

were frequent during the next twenty years. It was 
not on such occasions as these that the liberator feared 
for his people. 

In the summer of 1813 a vicious effort was made 
by the government to poison the people of England 
against the Irish Catholics, and the most infamous 
falsehoods regarding their lawlessness were dissemi- 
nated through the English press. The bitterness of 
the bigots served to engender a kindred feeling in the 
breasts of the Irish masses, and the temptation to join 
secret societies to meet the aggressions of the Orange- 
men was almost irresistible. The situation appealed 
to O'Connell as being packed with dynamite. Time 
and again we find him warning his people against these 
seditious organizations and urging them to keep within 
the law. 

Even more difficult, however, than preventing law- 
lessness was the task of preserving. harmony within 
his own army. The one great curse of the Irish peo- 
ple has ever been their disposition to quarrel among 
themselves. No one understood it better than O'Con- 
nell. Not only did he feel that it was essential to 
have harmony among the Catholics, but, as we have 
seen, unity among the Irish people. The most com- 
manding phase of his genius was his capacity as a 
harmonizer — his power as a peace maker. It was the 
unique element in his leadership. It accounts in a large 
degree for his final triumph. He was put to the test 
early in his leadership, in 1811, when the most acri- 
monious dissensions broke out in the committee. The 
country gentlemen resented the assumption of the rep- 
resentatives of Dublin, the farmers attacked the law- 
yers, a veritable tempest in a teapot, all due to petty 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 265 

jealousies, threatened to disorganize and utterly de- 
moralize. In one of the most stormy meetings O'Con- 
nell poured oil upon the troubled waters. Turning to 
both factions he exclaimed : 

"Could anything be imagined more agreeable to the 
Wellesleys and the Percivals than to find the Catholics 
of Ireland involved in a wrangle among themselves — 
than to see them engaged in attacking and vilifying one 
another when every faculty of their minds ought to be di- 
rected to concert one combined effort of all the Irish 
people to put down their enemies and to procure, in a 
constitutional course, their emancipation?" 

Again we find him bringing the warring factions 
to their sober senses with a solemn recitation of his- 
tory : 

"The old curse of the Catholics is, I fear, about to be 
renewed; division — and that made us what we are, and 
keeps us so — is again to rear its standard amongst us; 
but it was thus always with the Irish Catholics. I recol- 
lect that in reading the life of the great Duke of Or- 
mond, as he is called, I was forcibly struck with a dis- 
patch of his, transmitted about the year 1661, when he 
was lord lieutenant of Ireland. It was written to vindi- 
cate himself from the charge of having favored the pap- 
ists, and having given them permission to hold a public 
meeting in Dublin. His answer is remarkable. He re- 
jects with disdain the foul calumny of being a favorer 
of papists, though he admits he gave them leave to meet : 
'Because/ said he, T know by experience that the Irish 
papists never meet without dividing and degrading them- 
selves/ " 

In looking over the proceedings of the Catholic com- 
mittee and board one is impressed with the frequency 



266 THE IRISH ORATORS 

with which O'Connell diplomatically smooths away a 
difference with a suggestion, or prevents a division 
by a personal appeal. "Let me suggest, by way of 
accommodating the difference, an amendment," he be- 
gins — and the threatened trouble is over. "My God, 
are gentlemen so wedded to their opinions as not to 
yield a little for the sake of unanimity?" he exclaims, 
and the obstreperous one is shamed into submission. 
We have seen how O'Connell won the position of 
leadership — by the boldness of his program and his 
refusal to compromise with the common enemy. He 
had, through his majestic eloquence, carried his name 
to the most remote quarters. He was the cynosure 
of the Catholics of the world. He had aroused a 
people that had slept for six long centuries. The awak- 
ening had sent a thrill of fear through the govern- 
ment. It had followed the every move of the orator 
with its spies and reporters, but it found nothing upon 
which to base a prosecution. The country was com- 
paratively peaceful. The lawlessness was on the other 
side. But something had to be done — regardless of 
the law. Thus the Catholic committee was sup- 
pressed. Thus was the Catholic board put down. 
Thus were the masses of Ireland proscribed. But all 
that England did was nothing compared to what Ire- 
land did to wreck the movement. The aristocratic ele- 
ment of the Catholics, still hugging the securities, and 
voicing its discord through the sporadic speech of 
Sheil; the abandonment of the cause in parliament by 
its former champions; the outlawry of organization 
had their inevitable effect. The people, discouraged, 
became apathetic. The specter of despair swooped 
down upon the many. But there was one who never 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 267 

despaired. He knew that the reaction would come, 
and he waited until the time was ripe. And then he 
called to his side one who had fought him from the 
platform, denounced him through the press. During 
the hopeless days from 1821 until 1823 O'Connell com- 
municated his spirit to the people through annual let- 
ters, and one man — an Irishman and a Catholic — re- 
plied in a spiteful letter full of venom. This was 
Richard Lalor Sheil — and it was Sheil that O'Connell 
called to his side when he prepared to launch the Cath- 
olic association. What manner of man was O'Connell 
that he could not only forgive an enemy but exalt 
him? Before we enter upon the next and final phase 
of the emancipation fight, let us turn for a moment 
to contemplate the greatness of O'Connell, the man 
who was big enough to put jealousy aside. This was 
one of the secrets of his greatness. How great he 
was in this respect we shall now see. 

IV 

During the long period of his leadership O'Connell 
found it necessary according to his light to assume 
an aggressively hostile attitude toward many Irish 
patriots upon plain matters of policy and principle. 
It is worthy of notice that the three foremost cham- 
pions of emancipation, after the liberator himself, were 
constrained at different times to criticize O'Connell 
with a severity verging on virulence. Each of these 
immortal three — Grattan, Plunkett and Sheil — person- 
ally denounced him. The attack upon him by Grattan 
was in the most cutting style of that master of de- 
nunciation. Lord Plunkett made no secret of his dis- 



268 THE IRISH ORATORS 

taste for the methods of the agitator or for the man 
himself. Sheil sought opportunities to refer to him 
in terms of contempt. It is creditable to the general- 
ship of O'Connell that he did not reply in kind to any 
of the three. He met their arguments and passed their 
personalities without a word. He doubtless under- 
stood that a wordy war within the Irish camp would 
give aid and comfort to the enemy — but his restraint 
can not be accounted for on the grounds of policy 
alone. He was too big and broad to permit another 
man's ill opinion of him to affect his opinion of the 
other man. 

The differences between O'Connell and Grattan on 
the securities were deep and abiding, and up until the 
hour of his death the latter entertained the opinion 
that the liberator was wrecking the prospects of his 
country. The father of the independent parliament 
was not free from jealousy, and it was doubtless with 
something of bitterness that he beheld the younger man 
displacing him in the leadership of the Irish masses. 
During the heat of the contest he made a bitter per- 
sonal attack upon O'Connell, which was ignored. The 
liberator continued to battle against the securities, but 
never did he permit himself to be swept into an attack 
upon the venerable statesman who had done so much 
for Ireland. We have already shown that his crit- 
icisms of Grattan were invariably softened by tributes 
to his patriotism. Immediately after his death, when 
his son became a candidate to succeed him in parlia- 
ment, O'Connell plunged impetuously into the fight in 
his behalf; and in this speech we see how little Grat- 
tan's attack upon him had influenced his affection for 
and appreciation of Grattan : 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 269 

"We are met on this melancholy occasion to celebrate 
the obsequies of the greatest man Ireland ever saw. The 
widowed land of his birth, in mourning over his remains, 
feels it is a nation's sorrow, and turns with the anxiety 
of a parent to alleviate the grief of the orphan he has 
left. The virtues of that great patriot shone brilliant, 
pure, unsullied, ardent, unremitting, glowing. Oh, I 
should exhaust the dictionary three times told, ere I* could 
enumerate the virtues of Grattan. 

"In 1778, when Ireland was shackled, he reared the 
standard of independence; and in 1782 he stood forward 
as the champion of his country, achieving gloriously her 
independence. Earnestly, unremittingly did he labor for 
her ; bitterly did he deplore her wrongs, and if man could 
have prevented her ruin — if man could have saved her — ■ 
Grattan would have done it. 

"After the disastrous act of union, which met his most 
resolute and most determined opposition, he did not suf- 
fer despair to creep over his heart and induce him to 
abandon her, as was the case with too many others. No ; 
he remained firm to his duty in the darkest adversity; 
he continued his unwearying advocacy of his country's 
rights. Of him it may be truly said, in his own words — 
'He watched over her cradle, he followed her hearse/ " 

In the case of Lord Plunkett the liberator encoun- 
tered the same sort of opposition as from Grattan, and 
for the same reason. It is quite probable that O'Con- 
nell appealed even less to Plunkett than he did to 
Grattan, in that the former was less in sympathy tem- 
peramentally with democracy or agitation. And yet, 
in his letter to the people of Ireland in 1821, in which 
he set forth his reasons for refusing his support to 
the relief bill proposed by Plunkett, we find him, in 
referring to the man who had apologized to England 
for the agitation of the liberator, paying a tribute to 
his genius : 



270 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"As a professional man, I am perfectly sensible of his 
merits, I have known the powers of the first advocates 
of modern times — Erskine and Curran, Romilly and Ball 
— and I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Plunkett 
is more useful than any one of them; he combines a 
strength of mind and clearness of intellect with a per- 
petual and unceasing readiness in a degree which prob- 
ably very few men, perhaps no man, ever possessed be- 
fore. Others may exceed him in the higher order of 
eloquence, but in practical utility as an advocate there 
is no living man at either bar, in England or Ireland, to 
compare with him." 

In keeping with this is his tribute to Lord 
Brougham, with whom he frequently disagreed, and 
from whom he was subjected to a severe attack be- 
cause of the radicalism of his demands. The fact that 
he fought him on some propositions could not blind 
him to the services the eloquent Scotchman had ren- 
dered to the cause of civil and religious liberty, and 
we see him declaring that "if. our country should have 
occasion to erect a monument, not to a Wellington, 
but to perpetuate the resurrection of Ireland from the 
evils of the union and the curse of intolerance, oppres- 
sion and persecution, the first name written over the 
altar of justice should be 'Henry Brougham.' " 

In the case of Richard Lalor Sheil there was much 
to provoke O'Connell's lasting hostility. The brilliant 
little genius had assailed the no-compromise program 
of the liberator with extraordinary eloquence and some 
effect, and when, in 1821, O'Connell issued his annual 
address to the people, Sheil had put forth a counter- 
address assailing the leader with bitterness and spleen. 
During the dark days of the movement, with dissen- 
sion from within, and proscription from without, Sheil 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 271 

had stubbornly declined to yield on the veto and had 
charged O'Connell with responsibility for the lack 
of union. It is characteristic of the liberator that 
throughout these controversies his impatience with 
Sheil never caused him to lose sight of his remarkable 
capacity for good. In the very first brush between 
them, he had taken occasion to pay him the highest 
possible tribute. 

"Let my young friend join this standard/' he had said, 
"and soon shall he become a leader. To the superiority 
of his talent we shall cheerfully yield, and give him that 
station in his country's cause to which his high genius 
entitles him." 

The unique quality of mind which made it possible 
for him to exalt others to his own depreciation, and to 
measure properly the virtues of men who saw no virtue 
in him, made ultimate success possible. 

In 1823 a memorable meeting of gentlemen took 
place in a private house. The subject of discussion 
was the state of the country, the prospects for emanci- 
pation, the lamentable lack of aggressive organization 
and agitation. It was the consensus of opinion that 
the hour had struck for an audacious dash for religious 
and civil liberty. The most virile character in the com- 
pany was Daniel O'Connell. In a moment of inspira- 
tion he turned to a little man in the room and chal- 
lenged him to join in the organization of a new and 
broader movement for emancipation, and to cooperate 
in conveying the message to the waiting millions. The 
little man accepted the challenge — and Daniel O'Con- 
nell and Richard Lalor Sheil — united at last — passed 
from the house of their mutual friend to launch the 



272 THE IRISH ORATORS 

great and ultimately irresistible Catholic association 
which was to stir old Ireland to its foundation, and 
after six years of unparalleled activity to crown the 
cause with victory. 

V 

On April twenty-fifth, 1823, a few men met in 
rooms in Sackville Street, Dublin, and launched the 
tremendous organization which Lecky, the historian, 
was to pronounce "one of the most powerful political 
bodies ever known in history." And yet, how insig- 
nificant, how inauspicious the beginning! Less than 
fifty men formed the nucleus of the association that 
was to embrace the major part of Ireland within two 
years. There was something almost pathetic in the 
speech of O'Connell on the occasion of the initial 
meeting in which he apologized for taking the initia- 
tive on the ground that "some one" had to make it his 
business. It is surprising to find that with only ten 
members necessary to a quorum, the business of the 
association in its early days was frequently postponed 
for want of the necessary number. On one occasion 
we find O'Connell rushing from the room just before 
the hour set for the meeting, seizing two reluctant 
and astonished young priests from a book store, and 
dragging them into the rooms of the association just 
in time to form a quorum. 

But this apathetic attitude was only temporary. A 
little while, and the marvelous eloquence of O'Connell 
and Sheil, thundering from a hundred rostrums, in all 
sections, aroused the masses to a realization of their 
opportunity. And it was the masses that O'Connell 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 273 

sought. The curse of the movement for emancipation 
in the past had been that the active workers had been 
confined to the aristocratic element. The millions 
looked on as spectators — a thing apart. It was the 
mission and the purpose of O'Connell to harness this 
tremendous power to the chariot of emancipation. 
This he proposed to do by making them members of 
the association through the payment of a shilling a 
year. The amount was small, but every peasant who 
paid his penny a month would know that he too was 
enlisted in the war. And in the end the shillings would 
amount to pounds. In addition to this plan of enlist- 
ing the interest of the masses, he proposed to recruit 
the clergy, and to make them the leaders of the peo- 
ple. The priests and the people — a new idea, a dy- 
namic idea. And it worked. Within a little while the 
association had a great working income — an income 
with which to carry on a propaganda through the 
press, to defray parliamentary expenses, to meet the 
necessities of the law, and for the maintenance of an 
agent in London to look after the work in parliament. 
Before the end of 1824 the Catholic Rent, as this was 
called, amounted to nine hundred pounds a week, and 
ere the expiration of another year it had reached the 
amazing figure of from a thousand to twelve hundred 
pounds a week. Little wonder that England was 
startled in contemplating the possibilities of poverty- 
stricken but patriotic Ireland. 

And how was it done? 

By organization, by agitation, through the amalga- 
mation of all classes, Paddy, the peasant, linking arms 
with the peer, and led on by the priest — now a mili- 
tant force. The little island was lashed into a storm 



274 THE IRISH ORATORS 



a- 



by the ferocity of O'Connell's attacks upon the govern- 
ment, his expose of its iniquities, his shaming of the 
pusillanimity of the people. He shocked them into 
activity. At the first aggregate meeting following; the 
perfection of the organization he struck the keynote of 
his campaign in the declaration that the Catholics would 
either stand up and fight or submit to continuous in- 
dignities and oppression. Referring to the generous 
manner in which they had abandoned their agitation, 
out of deference to the visiting monarch, he exclaimed : 

"At that period I defy the tongue of malignity — the 
most shameless audacity of that compound of stupidity 
and slanderous villainy — produced from the crazed brain 
of a reverend fox-hunter, and translated afterward into 
better English by his coadjutor — The Warder, even to 
assert that anything was wanting on the part of the Cath- 
olics. I defy, too, the scribblers in that paper's credi- 
ble ally — that reservoir of baseness and calumny, in which 
truth never appears but by accident, The Mail; I defy 
their virulence — nay, I would appeal to their candor, if 
of such an attribute they could for a moment be sup- 
posed to be possessed, to point out any one occasion — 
any one in which the Catholics, either in act, in writing 
or in speeching, can be truly said to have, in the slight- 
est degree, been accessory to the failure of our gracious 
monarch's blessed work of conciliation. 

"And what has been the result of our having so mer- 
itoriously conducted ourselves? Need I ask you? Has 
it not been that our cause is abandoned, and that we have 
neglected our duty to ourselves? We have lain qui- 
escent and permitted the daily promulgation of Orange 
calumny, fearful of infringing the commands of our sov- 
ereign. 

"We saw a portion of the English press (but certainly 
with powers equaling only the dull stupidity of the bird 
of night) teem forth monstrous libels impeaching our 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 275 

loyalty. We saw the stall-fed church dignitary raise 
against us the voice of sectarian intolerance and bigotry ; 
we saw our religion foully traduced and ridiculed and 
stigmatized, and we were silent, until our enemies were 
believed; and the Catholics have suffered accordingly. 

"But there is a point beyond which experiment becomes 
dangerous. The Catholics are men — are Irishmen, and 
feel within their burning breasts the force of natural 
rights and the injustice of natural oppression. . . . 
And will you, my countrymen, submit to this bartering of 
your privileges and liberties? Will you, like torpid 
slaves, lie under the lash of the oppressor? If we are 
not free, let us at least prove ourselves worthy of be- 
ing so." 

This was the spirit of the new crusade. It was a 
declaration of uncompromising war. It aroused the 
people as they had not been aroused before. No armis- 
tice henceforth, no new treaty of Limerick, no com- 
promise, nothing but unqualified and complete' emanci- 
pation — and until that hour war and nothing but war ! 
The meetings of the association took on something of 
the importance of a parliament, dividing public in- 
terest with the Imperial law makers of Saint Stephens. 
Here grievances were discussed, wrongs denounced, 
rights demanded, and business was transacted with 
the punctiliousness of properly and legally accredited 
representatives. In the great meetings over the coun- 
try O'Connell spoke a language that skirted the sedi- 
tious. He no longer attempted to conciliate — he as- 
sailed. He no longer preached peace at any price — he 
hinted of war. His methods at this time have been 
criticized as those of a demagogue. If by that it is 
meant that he talked "down" to the people who would 
not have understood the language of a debating society 
— then he was a demagogue. Lecky, in his compara- 



276 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tively fair work on O'Connell, loves to characterize his 
speeches at this time as "mob oratory." As an illus- 
tration of his meaning we submit an extract from a 
speech made in 1824 — a speech during the delivery of 
which he swept the gamut of emotions, arousing the 
people to a frenzy of enthusiasm, convulsing them 
with laughter, transmitting to them something of his 
own burning indignation. He was making the point 
that England had played Ireland for a clown, conced- 
ing rights when the empire was in danger, punishing 
in days of peace in return for Erin's loyalty in time of 
trouble. 

"In the experimental despotism which England fas- 
tened on Ireland," he said, "her mighty appetite for slav- 
ery was not gorged ; and because our unfortunate country 
was proximate, and polite in the endurance of the bur- 
den so mercilessly imposed, it was inferred that slavery 
could be safely extended far and wide, and an attempt 
was therefore made on the American colonies. Despot- 
ism, in fact, is an all-craving and voracious animal; in- 
crease of appetite grows on what it feeds, until endurance 
became at length too vile ; and the Americans — the great 
God of Heaven bless them for it (laughter and applause) 
— shook off the thraldom which a parliament, represent- 
ing an inglorious and ignominious funding system, had 
sought. to impose. (Cheers.) Oh, it was a noble sight 
to see them in open battle, contending for their liberties. 
The recollection of the circumstance cheers and invig- 
orates me in my progress ; it gives me an elasticity which 
all the fatigues of the day can not depress — (cheers) — 

" 'The friends they tried were by their side — 
And the foes they dared before them/ 

"Wives animated their husbands to the combat; they 
bade them contend for their children, for the dear pledges 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 277 

of their mutual love — (hear, hear) — mothers enjoined 
their sons to remember those who bore them — the fair 
sex bade their lovers earn their favors in a 'well f oughten 
field/ and to return arrayed in glory. They did so — God 
of Heaven forever bless them. (Loud cheering, mingled 
with laughter.) Thanks to the valor and patriotism of 
Washington, a name dear to every lover of liberty, the 
Americans achieved their independence, and Providence 
spared the instrument to witness it. (Loud applause.) 

"The independence of America was the first blush of 
dawn to the Catholic, after a long and dreary night of 
degradation. Seventy years had they been in a land of 
bondage, but, like the chosen people, Providence had 
watched over them and redeemed them for the service 
of their country. The same Providence exists now, and 
why should we despair? (Cheers.) 

"In 1778 Holland assumed a threatening aspect and 
some wise friend (a laugh) whispered into the ear of 
England, 'Search the rich resources of the Irish heart; 
give to their arms a stimulus to exertion; delude them 
with promises if you will, but convert their power into 
your strength and render them subservient to your pur- 
poses.' England took the advice; the meteor flag was 
unfurled; the Danish, Spanish and Dutch fleets peopled 
a wide waste of waters; but what of Ireland? Oh, al- 
though long neglected, she was faithful in that day of 
need ; fifty thousand seamen were produced in a month ; 
the Volunteers organized; a federate independence was 
created; and the Catholic cause was debated. But lo! 
peace came, and gratitude vanished ; and justice was not 
abroad; and obligations remained unrequited; and the 
Catholics were forgotten. 

"Forgotten? No. Acts were passed against them. 
(Loud and long continued applause.) 

"Yes, strange as it may seem, the act taking from 
them the power to vote at vestries was passed at this 
time ; so if the rectors agreed to build a church, the poor 
Catholics could not ask, 'Who is to go into it?'— -(laugh- 
ter). Or if, taking cold, he required repairs, they could 



278 THE IRISH ORATORS 

not order him fifty shillings to buy window glass (laugh- 
ter). Next came the French Revolution. That revolu- 
tion produced some good, but it was not without alloy; 
it was mingled with much impiety. Liberty and religion 
were first separated. The experiment was a bad one. 
It had much of French levity in it and a deal that was 
much worse. The people of France should have remem- 
bered that liberty is the first instinct of a generous re- 
ligion. (Applause.) 

"But I am trespassing on the time of the meeting (no, 
no, no) and in some measure wandering (go on). Well, 
I like the subject, and I will go on a little longer. I 
was saying the French Revolution produced much good. 
So it did. Dumourier gained the battle of Jemappe — 
the French crossed the Pyrenees — General Biron was in 
Italy — England looked benignly on Ireland — it served her 
interest, it was her policy to do so, and she passed an- 
other act in favor of the Irish Catholics — (applause). 
The Irish were made more thirsty for liberty by the drop 
that fell on their parched lips — (applause). 

"There is not one who hears me who does not mourn 
in affection, in dress or in heart, for some relative or 
friend who fell on the field of battle (hear). My own 
heartstrings were torn asunder by the loss of a beloved 
brother, the companion of my youth and the offspring 
of the same loins. A kinsman of mine, too, died at the 
storming of St. Sebastian. Three times did he mount 
the breach, and he fell at last, covered with wounds and 
with glory — (applause). He was as gay and as lovely 
a - youth as ever shed his blood in defense of his country, 
and fair withal as ever trod the green sward of Erin — 
(much applause). I can not choose but name him. It 
was Lieutenant John McConnell, of the Fifty-third Reg- 
iment. And what did the relatives of these brave men 
gain by this? What the Catholics of Ireland? Why, 
the Marquis of Douro was made Duke of Wellington. 

". . . In Ireland we have been blamed for being agi- 
tators. I thank my God for being one. Whatever little 
we have gained, we have gained by agitation, while we 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 279, 

uniformly lose by moderation. The last word is repeated 
so often that I am sick of it. I wonder some gentlemen 
do not teach a parrot to repeat it. If we gain nothing 
by moderation, it costs us something. Our religion is 
reviled, and we thank the revilers ; they spit in our faces, 
and we paid 'em for it — (laughter and applause). This 
reminds me of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice — 

" 'Fair sir, you spat on me on Wednesday last ; 

On such a day you called me dog ; 

And for these courtesies I lend you so much monies/ " 

Such was the tenor of the association speeches of 
O'Connell. It was a new note to England. The praise 
of the revolutionary action of the Americans had an 
ominous sound. The pulsating intensity of the people 
was threatening. Their organization and unification 
were more perfect than ever before, and Wellington 
wrote to Peel that civil war would result unless the 
association should be put down. In February, 1825, 
the government determined to crush the organiza- 
tion which had become, in the hands of O'Connell, a 
serious menace. The wildest stories were disseminated 
over England, among them one to the effect that it 
was a Popish plot intended for the massacre of the 
Irish Protestants! When the bill was brought into 
parliament the Catholics swamped the house with peti- 
tions against it, and Lord Brougham exerted his mag- 
nificent eloquence against it, but to no avail. 

Lord Liverpool, in advocating the bill, charged that 
the association evaded and nullified the law, and levied 
an unauthorized tax upon the Catholics. This was a 
new wrinkle — a voluntary contribution, gladly given, 
twisted into an extortion of the poor ! During the de- 
bate O'Connell sat in the gallery of the house — a silent 



280 THE IRISH ORATORS 

spectator, looking on contemptuously. The answer of 
the Irish to this latest insult was an ovation to O'Con- 
nell on his return to Dublin. Met by an immense 
throng, he was escorted to his house in Merriam 
Square where he delivered a stirring speech from the 
balcony; and when, a few days later, a meeting was 
held at Ann Street Chapel, the house w T as packed five 
hours before the scheduled time. The liberator ap- 
peared on this occasion, defiantly arrayed in the uni- 
form of the association— blue frock with black silk 
buttons, a black velvet collar, a gilt button on the 
shoulders, white waistcoat and white trousers. 

The spirit would not down. The ghost of the mur- 
dered liberties of Ireland could not be laid. The de- 
termination of O'Connell could not be thwarted; and 
hardly had the association been put down when another 
was formed in such a fashion as not to be amenable 
to the law. And the fight went on. 

There was something of fatality in the stupidity of 
the government, in those days, that advanced the 
Catholic cause. 

The Catholic Relief bill of 1825 passed the house of 
commons and while not at all satisfactory, its passage 
would have done much toward defeating the cause of 
unqualified emancipation. When it reached the lords, 
the Duke of York, who must have been as stupid as he 
was bigoted, in presenting a petition against it, de- 
livered an unconstitutional and indecent speech which 
resulted in its rejection. 

The effect was tremendous. The speech of the duke 
was printed in letters of gold and hung in the homes of 
the Orangemen and in public places, and the indigna- 
tion of the Catholics burst into flame. O'Connell 




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DANIEL Q'CONNELL 281 

could have asked nothing better. The agitator made 
the most of his opportunity in a speech on the rejec- 
tion; and in referring to a peculiarly obnoxious utter- 
ance of the Marquis of Anglesea, he gave the states- 
man of Saint Stephens a start: 



"He said now is the time to fight. But, most noble 
marquis, we are not going to fight at all, and above all 
things, most noble marquis, we are not going to fight now 
under favor. This may be your time to fight — you may 
want us to fight ere long with you, as you wanted us 
before — your glories, and your medals, and your digni- 
ties, and your titles, were bought by the young blood of 
Catholic Ireland. We fought, Marquis of Anglesea, and 
you know it well — we fought and you are marquis; but 
if we had not fought with you, your island of Anglesea 
would ere this have sunk into a cabbage garden. And 
where would now have been the mighty conqueror of 
Europe; he who had talent to command victory, and 
judgment to look for services, and not creed to reward 
men for merits and not for professions of faith ; where 
would he have been if Ireland had not stood with you? 
I myself have worn, not only the trappings of woe, but 
the emblems of sincere mourning, for more than one 
gallant relative of mine who have shed their blood un- 
der your commands. We can fight — we will fight when 
England wants us. But we will not fight against her 
at present, and I trust we will not fight for her at all un- 
til she does us justice. 

"But, most noble marquis, though your soldiers fought 
gallantly and well with you, in a war which they were 
told was just and necessary, are you quite sure the sol- 
diers will fight in a crusade against the unarmed and 
wretched peasantry of Ireland? Your speech is pub- 
lished ; it will, when read in Armagh and the neighbor- 
ing counties, give joy, and will be celebrated in the next 
Orange procession; and again, as before, Catholic blood 
will be shed ; but, most noble marquis, the earth has not 



282 THE IRISH ORATORS 

covered all the blood that has been so shed ; it cries yet to 
heaven for vengeance, and not to man ; that blood may 
yet bring on an unfortunate hour of retribution; and if 
it do, what have you to fight with ? Count you on a gal- 
lant army ? 

"Let me tell you this story, Sir. I am but an humble 
individual. It happened to me, not many months ago, 
to be going through England ; my family were in a car- 
riage, on the box of which I was placed ; there came up, 
on the road, eight or ten sergeants and corporals with 
two hundred and fifty recruits. I perceived at once the 
countenances of my unfortunate countrymen laughing as 
they went along, for no other reason than because they 
were alive. They saw me, and some of them recognized 
me; they instantly burst from their sergeants and cor- 
porals, formed round my carriage, and gave me three 
cheers, most noble marquis. Well, may God bless them, 
wherever they are, poor fellows. Oh, you reckon with- 
out your host, let me tell you, when you think that a 
British army will trample on a set of petitioners for their 
rights — beggars for a little charity, who are looking up 
to you with eyes lifted and hands bent down. You will 
not fight us now, most noble marquis; and let me tell 
you, if the battle comes, you shall not have the choice 
of your position, either." 

This daring warning emanating from the hated agi- 
tator sent chills down the spines of the government 
officials and made a profound impression upon the 
Irish people. O'Connell had dared to keep the people 
reminded of the methods by which the Americans had 
won their independence, and had blessed the rebels for 
their rebellion. He had dared press upon the Irish 
the patent fact that they had been fighting English bat- 
tles and receiving, as reward for their blood, oppress- 
ive legislation. He now dared throw out the sugges- 
tion that the red coats themselves covered too many 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 283 

Irish hearts to make an appeal to arms against the 
Irish safe. But this was mere oratory. 

In the autumn of 1825 O'Connell determined to 
give the English a practical manifestation of his power. 
There was an election in Waterford where the Beres- 
fords had long been lords of the soil and masters of 
their tenants. The miserable serfs had voted under 
the lash of their masters. They had voted to parlia- 
ment the enemies of their cause — because they dare 
not do otherwise. In 1825 Lord George Beresford 
announced his candidacy — and O'Connell audaciously 
determined to challenge his pretensions. The agitator 
went down to Waterford and in a two-hours speech 
aroused the spirit and pride of the tenants. Another 
candidate was brought out, and Lord Beresford was 
treated to the unique shock of an overwhelming de- 
feat in his own bailiwick. The effect was magical. 
England began to understand that behind the words of 
O'Connell, men were massed. Better still, the long 
subjugated Irish began to realize that their liberation 
was in their own hands. This was the beginning of 
the end. 

In 1828 when the Duke of Wellington went into 
office, and Fitzgerald, the member for Clare, accepted 
the position of president of the board of trade, he was 
compelled to return to his people for re-election. The 
Catholic association had previously determined to op- 
pose the election of any Irish member who accepted 
office under the Wellington regime. A prominent 
Tory, Sir David Rose, either drawing upon his own 
imagination or acting upon an idle rumor, met Fitz- 
gerald on the street and suggested that O'Connell 
might run against him. The idea seemed prepos- 



284 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



terous. The oath was prohibitive against a Catholic 
and no one of the Catholic faith had stood for parlia- 
ment since the far-off days when all the members of 
the commons were of the Roman faith. Then again 
Fitzgerald, while in parliament, had acted with far 
more decency toward the Catholics than the vast ma- 
jority in the house, and was, consequently, not unpop- 
ular among them. In addition to all that, he was a 
man of ability and an ideal landlord. However the 
suggestion alarmed him and he approached O'Connell. 
It was the first intimation of such a thing that had come 
to him. He had not thought of running; nor did he 
look at first with favor upon the project. Then an 
inspiration struck him. Why not? Had not the time 
come to assert the claims of the Catholics to a seat in 
parliament? Would not a test force — the issue? 

That very night the editor of the Dublin Post, with 
whom O'Connell had not been on friendly terms, was 
startled to see the agitator enter his sanctum, hold 
forth his hand with the exclamation, "Let us be 
friends,'' and announce his candidacy for Clare. In 
an instant all enmity was forgotten. The candidate 
sat down in the office of the Post and dashed off his 
address to the people. That night Dublin was wild 
with excitement. The announcement of O'Connell 
almost smacked of revolution. The next day all Ire- 
land was seething. Across the channel the English 
threw up their hands in holy horror. The association 
buckled on the armor and prepared for battle. Funds 
were immediately subscribed. Accompanied by Sheil, 
the officers of the association, and the celebrated 
Father Murphy, O'Connell drove from Dublin in a 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 285 

carriage with four horses on his way to the scene of 
conflict. The citizens gave him an ovation as he drove 
through the streets. "May God bless you — may you 
succeed," shouted the people. The contest was ex- 
ceedingly bitter. The aristocracy and the landlords 
resorted to their old methods of intimidation without 
success. One possessor of a great estate met O'Con- 
nell in the street, a brace of pistols in his pockets. "By 
G — , O'Connell," he exclaimed passionately, "if you 
canvass one of my tenants I'll shoot you." With an 
expansive smile the agitator replied, "By G — , I'll can- 
vass every one of them" — and he did, and he captured 
them. Father Murphy and Sheil made passionate ap- 
peals to the tenantry to assert their manhood. The 
result was astounding. O'Connell was triumphantly 
returned. 

The effect was magical. The Irish people were in- 
toxicated with their success, and even the military 
made no effort to restrain their enthusiasm. The au- 
thorities confidently expected a revolution. The Mar- 
quis of Anglesea had seven thousand soldiers in readi- 
ness but he was careful to keep them concealed. The 
fact that O'Connell was followed by thousands on the 
way back to Dublm did not minimize the fear. In Lon- 
don the indignation was intense. A Protestant club 
was immediately formed. The lord lieutenant wrote 
back to London that he would undertake to maintain 
order for a year — no longer. In one day two thousand 
meetings were held in Ireland. Religious feeling ran 
high. The Marquis of Anglesea issued a proclamation 
to put down disturbances in the north, and O'Connell 
followed with a proclamation to put down disturbances 



286 THE IRISH ORATORS 

in the south. Already he was called "King Dan/' He 
was the master of Ireland — the commander-in-chief 
of four million men. 

He made no attempt to take his seat but made free 
use of his franking privileges. But the issue was 
drawn — and had to be met — and Wellington bowed 
to the inevitable. The Emancipation bill was quickly- 
passed, and on April thirteenth, 1829, it was presented 
to the king for his signature. It was like passing him 
some quinine on a spoon. As he took up his pen he 
exclaimed in childish petulance : 

"The Duke of Wellington is king of England, 
O'Connell is king of Ireland, and I suppose I am only 
dean of Windsor.'' 

And he signed it! 

In glancing over the bill the king found some oint- 
ment for his wounded feelings — it contained a spiteful 
clause to the effect that no Catholic should sit in par- 
liament unless elected after the passage of the bill. 

Notwithstanding the clause, O'Connell determined 
to claim his seat. But while his speech at the bar of 
the house was an unanswerable legal argument, ex- 
pressed in the most irreproachable language, and made 
a profound impression upon the distinguished English 
company that packed the house and galleries, he was 
refused the seat to which the people had elected him. 

Another stupid blunder — it only intensified the loy- 
alty of his followers, and when he issued his second 
address to the people of Clare and journeyed back to 
the country he was acclaimed a hero, and received 
everywhere as a conqueror. Towns were illuminated. 
Thousands thronged and surged around him. He was 
drawn into Clare in a triumphal car and returned with- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 287 

out a contest. Worn with the struggle, the liberator 
then turned happily toward his beloved Darrynane to 
reflect among the rugged mountains, and on the white 
shore of the sea, on the future struggle for the repeal 
of the union, to which he stood pledged to the people 
of Ireland. 

VI 

O'Connell carried to the imperial parliament an in- 
ternational reputation. In every Catholic country in 
the world his name had become all but a household 
word. It is illuminative of his status to know that 
when the Belgians elected their king three votes were 
cast for the Irish liberator. The people of France, 
especially in political circles, were frankly curious 
about him, and his name and achievements were com- 
mon topics in Parisian salons. Among his colleagues 
in the house he was both admired and hated. The ma- 
jority of those who had been forced to vote for the 
Relief bill could not forgive the man who had com- 
pelled them to swallow their prejudices and cast a vote 
for toleration. Nor could the average Englishman 
forget that he was an Irishman — and we shall see that 
O'Connell had no intention of permitting them to for- 
get it. The king hated him with all the ferocity of a 
coarse nature. His majesty habitually spoke of him as 
"that damn O'Connell." 

It must not be thought, however, that his powers 
were underestimated or that he numbered among his 
admirers no members of the house of commons or the 
lords. Lord Palmerson characterized his election to 
the house, and his audacity in making the bolt for it, 
as "sublime." John Bright, while differing from him 



288 THE IRISH ORATORS 

on many subjects, entertained the deepest respect for 
him — a respect which was increased by the liberator's 
uncompromising opposition to human slavery. Ben- 
jamin Disraeli, then young and inexperienced, but 
consumed by an inordinate ambition, set himself the 
task of cultivating O'Connell. While concentrating 
his attention largely upon legislation affecting Ireland, 
he entered earnestly into all parliamentary battles for 
the amelioration of the condition of the oppressed, and 
his speeches in favor of universal suffrage, parlia- 
mentary reform, law reform, the emancipation of the 
Jews, and the abolition of capital punishment forced 
upon his enemies the realization of the breadth of his 
statesmanship. 

And all the while O'Connell had in view one single 
thing — the repeal of the act of union, and the restora- 
tion of Grattan's parliament in Dublin. During the 
first years of his parliamentary career he refrained 
from a precipitate attempt to force his views upon his 
hostile colleagues, and exerted himself to restrain the 
impatience of his countrymen. In truth the spirit he 
had aroused in a long apologetic people during the 
progress of the fight for emancipation would not down. 
The Marquis of Anglesea, the lord lieutenant of Ire- 
land, in an effort to quell the disturbances of the times 
issued no less than four proclamations within a month 
in 1830, putting down repeal breakfasts, and in the 
spring of the following year the government committed 
the stupid blunder of arresting O'Connell in his own 
house for holding "illegal meetings." Nothing came 
of the arrest, but the fact that it had been made did 
not operate as a harmonizer in Ireland. 

It was not until 1833 that O'Connell found the op- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 289 

portunity he sought of forcing the commons to listen 
to a recital of the brutalities and butcheries practised 
in Ireland in the administration of the government. 
The debate on the Coercion act of that year was bitter 
and brilliantly conducted, and while pitted against such 
masters as Peel, Stanley, Macaulay and Brougham, the 
champion of Ireland created a profound impression by 
the boldness with which he traced the outrages in his 
country to the cold-blooded brutality of the govern- 
mental policy. "You gave the peasants stone for 
bread, and martial law for justice," he thundered at 
Sir Robert Peel. "You have brains of lead, hearts of 
stone and fangs of iron," he shouted at the Whigs. 
Turning to the ministers he declared that their bill was 
"bottomed on the most glaring and notorious false- 
hoods." He denounced the suspension of the habeas 
corpus act and the proposal to turn the accused in Ire- 
land over to the tender and intelligent mercies of a 
military tribunal as infinitely worse than the practises 
which had resulted in the American revolution. He 
never permitted the English to forget that revolution. 

In his fight on the Coercion bill O'Connell did not 
content himself with a mere expose of the infamies of 
the measure, but with rare parliamentary generalship 
he obstructed its progress at every stage, and fur- 
nished a precedent that was to be an inspiration to 
Parnell on a similar occasion years later. The bill 
passed — but there could be no hypocritical pretension 
on the part of the English public that the nature of the 
bill was misunderstood. 

The following year the liberator was forced by an 
insistent public opinion he could not withstand to bring 
forward a motion for the repeal of the union at a time 



290 THE IRISH ORATORS 

when nothing could possibly have been accomplished. 
He was on the ground and understood the situation, 
but the impatient repealers of Ireland were deter- 
mined upon immediate action. The motion was conse- 
quently brought in, overwhelmingly lost, and the cause 
of repeal was set back by at least nine years. 

The liberator determined, on the defeat of his mo- 
tion, never again to be forced into action against his 
own judgment. He understood now that time alone 
could remedy the wrongs of years through constitu- 
tional methods. 

The following year the general election took place 
and O'Connell, now bent upon making the Irish peo- 
ple an essential factor in English politics, by punish- 
ing the Tories for the passage of the Coercion bill, 
threw himself passionately into the contest in Ireland 
and urged the Irishmen in the manufacturing centers 
of England to support the Whigs. The result was the 
overthrow of the Peel ministry and the semi-alliance 
between the Whigs and O'Connell. This countenanc- 
ing of the Whigs on the part of the liberator was one 
of the underlying causes of the defection of Young 
Ireland a few years later. In the light of history, how- 
ever, O'Connell must be credited with having made a 
fairly good bargain for his country without having 
stipulated anything for himself. An historic meet- 
ing was held at the home of Lord John Russell be- 
tween the leaders of the Whig party and the liberator, 
and a working arrangement was made. The result was 
that O'Connell was practically permitted to name the 
law officers in Ireland and to exercise the power of 
veto over any obnoxious name proposed for the lord 
lieutenantship. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 291 

The moment the public learned of the conference at 
Lord John Russell's the Tories undertook to embarrass 
the ministry of Lord Melbourne — the Whig prime min- 
ister — by disseminating the story that it had been 
forced to make humiliating terms with the hated 
O'Connell. At the earliest opportunity Lord Alvan- 
ley interrogated Melbourne as to whether he had ar- 
ranged for "the powerful aid of O'Connell and his 
party," and upon receiving a diplomatic denial, he 
congratulated the ministry upon the absence of an 
alliance. Lord Liverpool also participated in this 
polite whipping of the Irish leader. During the epi- 
sode O'Connell held his peace, but on the following 
day he found an opportunity to repay the two peers 
with a vengeance when a bewhiskered member, in 
speaking of the ministry, and its prompter and spon- 
sor, O'Connell, said that he did "not like the coun- 
tenance of the gentleman opposite." At this O'Connell 
rose and in his most sarcastic manner said : 



"I admire the good humor with which the gallant col- 
onel has made his observations, and although there might 
be something very remarkable in the countenances of 
gentlemen on this side of the house, yet I think the gal- 
lant colonel's countenance, at all events, is as remarkable 
as any upon the ministerial benches. I will not abate 
him a single hair in point of good humor. It is pleasant, 
Sir, to have these things discussed in the good temper 
and with the politeness which characterized the gallant 
colonel. Elsewhere they may be treated in a different 
style. Those considered, by the resolution of this house, 
as unfit to hold office, may presume to talk of the Irish 
representatives in a manner highly unbecoming any mem- 
ber, exceedingly indecent; an indecency that would be 
insufferable if it were not ridiculous. There is not a 



292 THE IRISH ORATORS 

creature, not even a half maniac or a half idiot, that may 
not take upon himself to use that language there which 
he would know better than to make use of elsewhere. 
And the bloated buffoon ought to learn the distinction 
between independent men and those whose votes are not 
worth purchasing, even if they were in the market." 

The "half maniac" and "half idiot" was understood 
to apply to Liverpool, while "bloated buffoon" was ac- 
cepted as an accurate description of Alvanley. 

Nothing more serious resulted from the use of this 
language than an unsuccessful attempt on the part of 
Liverpool to have O'Connell expelled from the Brooks 
Club. The spirit in which the liberator met the sneers 
of comparatively stupid English statesmen served to 
popularize him with the English masses, and about this 
time he became something of a power in the great 
manufacturing centers. Henceforth we shall find him 
giving a general support to the Melbourne ministry, 
battling on every occasion for Ireland, sometimes 
voting against the Whigs, but openly determined to 
give them an opportunity to demonstrate their capacity 
properly to govern Ireland. During 1837 and 1838 he 
took a foremost part in the debates on the Irish Cor- 
poration Reform bill, and assuming such an authori- 
tative attitude that Londonderry declared him "more 
dictatorial and impudent than ever," only to receive in 
reply a characterization as "a snivelling, yelling part 
of a pack without a huntsman." In 1838 he was en- 
tertained at a banquet at the Crown and Anchor Tav- 
ern in London, and in the course of his speech, in re- 
ferring to the faults of the Irish Reform bill, he said 
that in the house of commons Ireland was not safe 
"from the perjury of English and Scotch gentlemen," 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 293 

This gave his enemies another chance to discredit him 
with the house and the matter was brought to the at- 
tention of the commons. They, who expected an apol- 
ogy, reckoned without their host. 

"I express no regret," he said. "I retract nothing. I 
repent nothing. I do not desire unnecessarily to use hard 
or offensive language. I wish I could find terms less 
objectionable and equally significant, but I can not. I 
am bound to reassert what I asserted." 

In uttering this defiance he confidently expected to 
be sent to the tower, but the Tories were as cowardly 
as they were offensive. 

It was in the year of this incident that O'Connell 
announced his Irish program — corporate reform, an 
extension of the franchise, a due proportion of repre- 
sentation, and freedom from the necessity of support- 
ing the Protestant church. This program he offered 
as an alternative to the devotion of the remainder of 
his life to the cause of repeal. There can be no doubt 
but that O'Connell looked upon the Whigs as friends 
of Ireland and believed that they could be depended 
upon to right at least some of the Irish wrongs. He 
was willing to wait and give them the chance. The 
enormous influence he wielded with his own people was 
manifested in his ability to persuade them to join him 
in this waiting policy. Speaking to the people of Dub- 
lin in 1836, he said : 

"I go to England to work out justice to Ireland. If 
I get that justice do you consent that I shall abandon 
repeal ? I put that question to the people of Kerry, and 
I got an answer in the affirmative. I put the same ques- 



294 THE IRISH ORATORS 



tion at Tuam and I got the same reply. I put the same 
question at Moate, and I got the same reply. I put it 
also to the honest men of the Queens county, and they 
gave me the same answer. I now put that question to 
you. I want you to strengthen me with your authority, 
that I may go and tell the English people that I am au- 
thorized to make that bargain with them." 

With the people of Ireland behind him on this prop- 
osition of a peaceful solution of the Irish problem he 
went over to England and repeated his proposition at 
great meetings at Liverpool, Worcester and Warwick. 
At Liverpool he said : 

"We have stood by you in your contests, and we are 
ready to do so again. When the meteor flag of England 
was borne forward to victory, amidst slaughter, death 
and carnage of thousands — when shouts of triumph have 
issued from British decks — and they have done so for a 
thousand years and will do so for a thousand more — 
when they have been heard on the battle plain and 
o'er the vasty deep — when the stream of British blood 
flowed in fullest tide to British glory and British fame, 
did the life current of the sons of Ireland flow less copi- 
ously or less warmly in the cause than yours — yours 
whose dearer rights were battled for? We want to be 
your brothers and stand by your side. What — are you 
to have all the spoils of victory and we nothing but the 
blows? Forbid it, English honor and English interests. 
There are many things to be done for you yet. Your 
corporate reform bill requires to be amended. Here we 
are. Your franchise requires to be extended. Here we 
are. Your honest and industrious classes require to be 
protected by the ballot ; and here we are." 



It might have been thought that with Ireland taking 
such a position through her chief spokesman that Eng- 
land would have been persuaded to alter her policy 



DANIEL O'COMNELL 295 

toward the Irish people, and have gladly availed her- 
self of the opportunity to conciliate the subjugated 
race and reconcile it to the union. It was the hope of 
O'Connell. And yet even while he was offering the 
olive branch, we find parliament persisting in the policy 
which could not do otherwise than reawaken the de- 
mand for the repeal of the union. An illustration of 
the spirit which met O'Connell's peace propositions 
may be given in connection with the discussion follow- 
ing the mysterious murder of the notorious Lord Nor- 
bury, who presided with such brutality at the trial of 
Robert Emmet. A Mr. Shaw, representing Dublin, 
and a poor Irishman, moved for a return on the out- 
rages in Ireland. O'Connell's reply was bitter, and 
the spirit of the house may be gathered from the na- 
ture of the interruptions : 

"Speeches have been made by four gentlemen, natives 
of Ireland, who, it would appear, come here for the sole 
purpose of vilifying their native land, and endeavoring 
to prove that it is the worst and most criminal country 
on the face of the earth. (Loud cries of 'oh' from the 
Tories.) Yes, to come here to calumniate the country 
that gave them birth. It is said that there are some soils 
that produce enormous and crawling creatures — things 
odious and disgusting. (Loud cheers from the Tories.) 
Yes, you who cheer — there you are— can you deny it ? 
Are you not calumniators? (Hisses.) Oh, you hiss, 
but you can not sting. I rejoice in my native land; I 
rejoice that I belong to it; your slanders can not dimin- 
ish my regard for it ; your malevolence can not blacken 
it in my estimation ; and though your vices and crimes 
have driven its people to outrage and murder— (cries of 
'Order')— yes, I say your vices and crimes— ('Chair, 
chair'). Well then, the crimes of men like you have 
produced these results. . . . Fourteen murders have 



296 THE IRISH ORATORS 

occurred in Ireland since the sixteenth of February. 
England since that period has presented twenty-five ; yet 
no English member has arisen to exclaim 'What an 
abominable country is mine. What shocking people are 
the people of England/ " 

Toward the latter part of his experiment with Eng- 
lish justice the Irish Municipal bill, which had passed 
the commons, was returned from the lords miserably 
emasculated. Nothing could have been more fatal 
to the "experiment." In a burst of indignation O'Con- 
nell exclaimed in the house : 

"Neither the noble duke nor your minority shall ever 
be permitted to trample upon Ireland with impunity. In 
the name of the Irish people I give you this defiance. 
Do you think that I mock when I talk to you? I tell 
you if you refuse to do justice to us, we are able to do 
justice to ourselves. I have given up the agitation of the 
question of the repeal of the union, and now see what 
an argument you have given me in support of it." 

Some time before the downfall of the Melbourne 
ministry and the accession of the Tories to power un- 
der the leadership of Sir Robert Peel, the liberator 
was convinced that justice would never be done to 
Ireland until she forced the repeal of the union. While 
it is difficult to understand how he was imposed upon 
by Whig pretensions so long, it is but fair to assume 
that he clung tenaciously to the hope that the party to 
which he had given a certain support would right the 
ancient wrongs of Ireland. Perhaps his personal re- 
lationship with some of the leaders of the party may 
have unconsciously affected his judgment ; possibly he 
merely hesitated to acknowledge that he had been de- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 297 

ceived. The people of Ireland had authorized the ex- 
periment but they had long since tired of it. The spirit 
of revolt was once more in the air. The demand that 
the liberator lead them in an onslaught on the union 
was insistent. That this demand was music to his 
ears we have reasons to believe. Toward the latter 
part of the Melbourne ministry, in speaking to the 
National Union at Dublin, he said : 

"Oh, let us for a moment contemplate the scene on the 
day when we shall turn out the money changers from 
the beautiful edifice, in which our parliament sat before, 
and in which it will sit again ; that day when the streets 
will be crowded with free Irishmen whose shouts for 
liberty will rend the air; when every window will pro- 
duce a galaxy of native loveliness ; and when the noble 
and high-spirited youth of Ireland will stand in the streets 
of our beautiful city shouting liberty, independence, peace 
and tranquillity for Ireland — (loud cheers) — and when 
the speaker of the house of commons shall again take 
his seat, I will claim the privilege — perhaps it may be 
vanity — of moving the address — (tremendous cheering). 
I have indulged in the anticipation of this glorious day 
while gazing upon the vast Atlantic. For I love the wild 
beauties of nature; and I have but just come from my 
native mountains, where I walked abroad amid the most 
magnificent scenery in the world; and where I listened 
to the voice of nature, as if speaking to eternity, in the 
mighty waves which broke innocuously upon the iron- 
bound cliffs of my native shore. There I heard the 
mountain stream, as if whispering, in a still soft voice, 
'Now is the time to strain every nerve for Ireland's re- 
generation, when her sons have forgot the bad passions 
which have so long kept them enslaved by setting them 
against each other/ Seven hundred years have now 
rolled on since the first hostile foot of the Saxon and 
the stranger polluted your lovely soil; but the time is 
come when the sons of Ireland, in peaceable but irre- 



298 THE IRISH ORATORS 

sistible strength, bound together by chains of love, become 
in their union too strong for bondage, and walk abroad 
in the full enjoyment of liberty — (long continued ap- 
plause). I want no triumph; I only ask that all Irish- 
men shall be bound in a link of brotherly love ; and that 
once accomplished, I anticipate a higher delight — when, 
in the words of the poet, I can say— 

" 'Look through nature, through the range 
Of planets, suns and adamantine spheres, 
Whirling unshaken through the void immense, 
And speak, oh man, can this capacious scene 
With half that kindling majesty dilate 
My strong conception, as when Brutus rose 
Amidst the crowd of patriots — and his arm upflung 
Like immortal Jove, when guilt brings down the thunder 
Called on Tully's name and bade the father of his coun- 
try, hail.' 

"I quit Rome and return to my native land; for lo! 
the union's prostrate in the dust, and Ireland again is 
free." 

Thus, after his fair experiment, the mind of O'Con- 
nell recurred to his original idea. His first public ut- 
terance had been in protest against the consummation 
of the union. Throughout the long struggle for Cath- 
olic emancipation the repeal was the underlying 
thought. It was with the idea of ultimate repeal that 
he had entered parliament. He had satisfied himself 
that if Ireland was ever again to stand forth a free 
nation, it would not be through any concessions of an 
English parliament, but because the Irish people arose 
in the majesty of their might and forced their rights 
from a reluctant and traditional oppressor. His ten 
years in parliament had not been entirely lean years. 
He had accomplished much. But after all, the name 






DANIEL O'CONNELL 299 

O'Connell is not popularly associated with his parlia- 
mentary career. His place was out among the people, 
under the canopy of the heavens, arousing them with 
his splendid eloquence, and leading them on, in peace- 
ful revolution, to the righting of their wrongs. He 
had played fair with England — and England had not 
played fair with him. He had given her the chance to 
put down the agitation for the repeal of the union by 
simply doing justice — and she had spurned the chance. 
Once more the liberator heard the call of his people — 
once more responded. And we shall now behold him 
— swaying a nation in the succession of marvelous 
meetings that surpass anything the world has ever 
known. 



VII 



On April fifteenth, 1840, a few gentlemen met at 
the Corn Exchange in Dublin and founded the Re- 
peal Association. The hour set for the meeting ar- 
rived and scarcely a handful of men were present. 
There was a wait of an hour — and but few more put 
in an appearance. The beginning of the most spectac- 
ular movement in the history of Ireland was inauspi- 
cious. The failure of the people to take fire in the 
beginning was born of the conviction of the younger 
element that bullets rather than ballots would be nec- 
essary. Only the magnetic, over-powering personality 
of O'Connell could have prevailed over the sense of 
hopelessness with which the masses had begun to look 
upon constitutional agitation. But O'Connell pre- 
vailed. 

In the autumn of 1840 he began the series of mon- 



300 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ster meetings that were to convert the island into a 
seething mass of revolutionary men. Almost from the 
beginning the people were aflame. The entire popula- 
tion was on the march. The nation was moving, amid 
the waving of banners, the burning of incense, the 
martial music of bands, the procession of pageants, 
toward its coronation. In the beginning the English 
press tried to dismiss the new movement with a smile. 
The London Examiner compared it to the cry of the 
Darrynane beagles. The reply of O'Connell struck a 
popular chord — "Yes, but he made a better hit than he 
intended, for my beagles never cry until they catch 
their game." 

The first of the spectacular meetings was held at 
Cork. On his way the carriage of the liberator was 
met by thousands of wildly excited and jubilant men 
of the red-blood type who attempted to take the horses 
from the carriage and draw him into the city. "No, 
no," cried O'Connell, "I will never let you men do the 
business of horses if I can help it. Don't touch that 
harness, you vagabonds. I am trying to elevate your 
position, and I will not permit you to degrade your- 
selves." A hearty laugh from the crowd — and the 
carriage drove on surrounded by the cheering thou- 
sands. The meeting was held at Batty's circus. The 
enthusiasm was tremendous. The movement gained 
in velocity. 

The agitator proceeded to Limerick. Here he was 
met with another army one hundred thousand strong 
— red-blooded men. The working classes took upon 
themselves the arrangements. The ship carpenters got 
up a picturesque pageant. They arranged a boat, on 
wheels, and, within the boat sat Neptune with his 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 301 

trident, arrayed in a sea green costume. On the ap- 
proach of the liberator Neptune rose, and amid the 
acclamations of the seething multitude delivered an ad- 
dress to which O'Connell smilingly replied that he "felt 
refreshed by receiving an aquatic compliment on the 
dusty highroad." The procession moved on — all Lim- 
erick, men, women and children, moved on — to 
Cruise's hotel, where O'Connell delivered a stirring 
speech. His speeches during this period were calcu- 
lated to appeal to the patriotic pride and sentiment of 
the people — eulogies of the land of their fathers, 
tributes to its beauty of hill and vale and stream, com- 
ments upon the contrast between the fertility of its 
soil and the distress of its people, and all the evils of 
the country were traced in bold defiant language to 
English rule. He reached their hearts with Moore's 
melodies. He aroused their passions with the violated 
treaty of Limerick. He touched their pride with pic- 
tures of Grattan's parliament. After the meeting at 
the hotel, O'Connell and his party proceeded gravely 
to the treaty stone where speeches were made. This 
was holding up to the maddened throng the garments 
of Caesar pierced with the daggers of traitors. 

The first monster meeting excited the emulation of 
other cities. The orator passed on to Ennis, where 
he addressed fifty thousand men ; and a little later on to 
Kilkenny, where two hundred thousand people greeted 
him as a conqueror — as a liberator. Here there was 
a suggestion of the possibilities of the agitation when 
twenty thousand men on horseback, the Repeal Cav- 
alry, rode through the streets, and stood sentinel while 
O'Connell spoke. Here O'Connell made his appeal to 
the religious character of the masses: 



302 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"Your priesthood were hunted and put to death," he 
said, "yet your hierarchy has remained unbroken — a no- 
ble monument of your faith and piety. The traveler who 
wanders over eastern deserts beholds the majestic tem- 
ples of Baalbec or Palmyra, which rear their proud col- 
umns to the heavens in the midst of solitude and desola- 
tion. Such is the church in Ireland. In the midst of 
our political desolation, a sacred Palmyra has ever re- 
mained to us." 

Thus he hurried from one triumph to another, a 
trail of flame, creating a conflagration everywhere — 
driving the timid to cover, calling the brave to battle. 
Speaking to hundreds of thousands by word of mouth 
he reached the millions through the press through his 
traveling companions, Doctor Gray, of The Freeman's 
Journal, and Richard Barret, of The Pilot. 

And all the while he held these millions in the hol- 
low of his hand. They were not marshaled in col- 
umns, but they were no mob. He constituted every 
Irishman a committee of one to keep the peace. When 
some disturbances occurred at Limerick, he hastily 
despatched a messenger to that city, bearing a white 
flag edged with green upon which was inscribed, "Who- 
ever commits a crime adds strength to the enemy." He 
reiterated this message a thousand times. The crusade 
of Father Matthew made it possible to assemble hun- 
dreds of thousands without incurring the slightest risk 
of danger. 

In the early part of 1841 the enemies of Ireland be- 
gan to move. Their plan contemplated the assassina- 
tion of the liberator. It was intended to murder him 
on the way to Belfast. He was notified of his dan- 
ger. He ordered post horses all along the road from 
Dublin for one day under his own, and two days ear- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 303 

lier he ordered horses under an assumed name. He 
went two days earlier and escaped the murderer's steel. 
Arriving at Belfast he was given a soiree by five hun- 
dred ladies. The gallant enemy stoned the building, 
breaking the windows, smashing the chandeliers and 
injuring one woman. It was not the first time that the 
enemies of Ireland had made war on women and chil- 
dren. 

On another occasion it was planned to meet O'Con- 
nell's constitutional agitation with assassination. It 
was intended to meet him on the road, to surround his 
carriage and shoot him. Leaving the carriage he 
crossed the fields and escaped. 

Unable to assassinate with bullet or steel, England 
made an attempt upon his reputation. The people of 
Ireland were again contributing to the success of the 
movement through the payment of rent to O'Connell, 
and he was accused of playing upon the patriotism of 
the people for mercenary motives. The attack was 
venomous but it disgusted even the decent people of 
England. Lord Greville, in his Memoirs, in referring 
to these attacks, has said: "His dependence on his 
country's bounty in the rent that was levied for so 
many years was alike honorable to the contributors and 
the recipient. It was an income nobly given and nobly 
earned." 

These brutal attacks upon his life and reputation 
only steeled the arm of the liberator. Lie began to 
verge on the seditious with his defiance. At one of 
the great meetings he said: 

"We are eight millions — there is another million of 
Irishmen in England ; there are Irishmen not forgetful 
of their country in the English army. We shall make 



304 THE IRISH ORATORS 

no rebellion, we wish no civil war, we shall keep on the 
ground of the constitution so long as we are allowed to do 
so ; but if Peel forces on a contest, if he invades the con- 
stitutional rights of the Irish people — then va metis be- 
tween the contending parties. Where is the coward who 
would not die for such a land as Ireland? Have not 
Irishmen the ordinary courage of Englishmen ? Are they 
to be treated as slaves ? Will they submit to being tram- 
pled under foot? They shall never trample me under 
their feet ; if they do so it shall be my dead body." 

Learning of this tone in the liberator's speeches, the 
press of England began to hint of armed forces being 
despatched to Ireland, in articles intimating that the 
power of steam had put Ireland within the grasp of 
England. At the first opportunity O'Connell replied : 

"They threaten us with troops by steam. They say 
that a few hours will land an army here. Steam is a 
powerful foe — but steam is an equally powerful friend. 
Whisper it in your ear, John Bull, steam has brought 
America within ten days' sail of Ireland." 

Once more — America! 

The movement gained an impetus during the year 
1842 and O'Connell announced that 1843 would be the 
banner year. The association was then formed into 
three sections — the members, the associates and the 
Volunteers. The card issued to the Volunteers was 
designed by O'Callaghan, of The Green Book. It was 
a challenge. It was as wine to the people of Ireland 
— a red flag to John Bull. It contained the names of 
the four great battles in which the Irish defeated the 
Danes. This was calculated to arouse the martial 
pride of a martial race. It was designed with two 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 305 

columns. On the shaft of one were the significant 
words : 

"Ireland contains thirty-two thousand two hundred and 
one geographical square miles. It is larger than Portugal 
by four thousand six hundred and forty-nine miles ; larger 
than Bavaria and Saxony by four thousand four hundred 
and seventy-three miles ; larger than Naples and Sicily by 
four hundred and nine miles; larger than Hanover, the 
Papal States and Tuscany by one thousand two hundred 
and eighty-five miles; larger than Denmark, Hesse, 
Darmstadt and the Electorate of the Hess by nine thou- 
sand six hundred and nine miles; larger than Greece 
and Switzerland by five thousand five hundred and sixty- 
five miles ; larger than Holland and Belgium by thirteen 
thousand and sixty-five miles ; it is in population superior 
to eighteen, and in extent of territory superior to fifteen 
European states — and has not a parliament." 

On another column was the inscription : 

"Ireland has eight million seven hundred and fifty 
thousand inhabitants ; has a yearly income of five million 
pounds ; exports nearly eighteen million pounds' worth of 
produce; sends yearly (after paying government ex- 
penses) to England two million five hundred thousand 
pounds; remits yearly to absentees five million pounds; 
supplied during the last great war against France the 
general, two-thirds of the men and officers of the Eng- 
lish army and navy ; and has a military population of two 
million — and has not a parliament." 

England finally became alarmed. All Ireland was 
"up." The millions were on the march. O'Connell 
was speaking to audiences of hundreds of thousands at 
a time. The opposition to the ministry in the English 
parliament interrogated Sir Robert Peel as to whether 



306 THE IRISH ORATORS 

he proposed to suppress the movement. The prime 
minister replied that he would if he could. There had 
been no lawlessness; no drunkenness at the monster 
meetings; no sedition; no injuries — but the prime min- 
ister would suppress a constitutional agitation if he 
could ! The impudence of the reply aroused the fight- 
ing blood of O'Connell, and he tauntingly replied in a 
public speech: 

"We are told that some desperate measures are to be 
taken for the suppression of public opinion upon the 
question of repeal. I will tell Peel where he may find 
a suggestion for his bill. In the American Congress for 
the District of Columbia they have passed a law that the 
house shall not receive any petitions from, nor any pe- 
titions on behalf of, slaves, even though the petitioners 
be freemen. I shall send for a copy of that act of the 
Columbian legislature and send it to Peel, that he may 
take it as his model when he is framing his bill for the 
coercion of the Irish people. He shall go the full length 
of the Coercion bill if he stirs at all." 

And the monster meetings became more frequent 
and more immense. About this time occurred the mar- 
velous meeting at Tar a — the seat of the ancient kings. 
There was something inspiring in the scene. It was a 
hot August day. Although fifty miles from Dublin, 
it has been estimated that one thousand four hundred 
vehicles went out from Dublin alone. The roads 
leading to Tara were crowded. It was one Sunday, 
a holiday for the church, and the enthusiasm of the 
marching nation — for it was a marching nation — was 
intense. Not a drunken man was seen among the 
thousands. Not a quarrel took place. Not a fight 
marred the solemnity of the occasion. Men, women 



DANIEL O'CONNELE 307 

and children marched, drove and rode in perfect safety 
on the way to the crowning of King Dan. Bands 
played patriotic airs. Temporary altars were built 
along the road at frequent intervals where masses 
were celebrated. The odor of incense mingled with 
the odor of the trees. Now and then a sermon was 
preached on temperance. Father Matthew was march- 
ing hand in hand with the liberator. The dignitaries 
of the church were in attendance. 

When he ascended the platform, O'Connell looked 
out over a wondrous sea of humanity — stretching all 
around him, and back, far back, beyond the reach of 
the human voice, to where features were blurred by 
the distance. Over a million men, women and chil- 
dren stood at Tara on that memorable day. The Lon- 
don Times placed the number at a million — and the 
Times didn't exaggerate in favor of the Irish. The 
scene was witnessed by one who had the capacity to 
transfer it to a canvas that can not fade. Bulwer's 
(description is the best that has come down to us : 

"Once to my sight the giant thus was given, 

Walled by wide air, and roofed by boundless heaven : 

Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, 

And wave on wave flowed into space away. 

Methought no clarion could have sent its sound 

E'en to the center of the hosts around ; 

And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, 

As from some church spire swings the silvery bell ; 

Aloft and clear from airy tide to tide 

It glided easy as a bird may glide. 

To the last verge of that vast audience sent, 

It played with each wild passion as it went : 

Now stirred the uproar — now the murmur stilled, 

And sobs or laughter answered as it willed. 



308 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Then did I know what swells of infinite choice 
To rouse or lull was the sweet human voice. 
Then did I learn to seize the sudden clue 
To the grand troublous life antique — to view 
Under the rock-stand of Demosthenes 
Mutable Athens heave her noisy seas." 

On the outskirts of the multitude where the voice 
of the orator could scarcely be heard, his gestures were 
understood, and the people who could not hear stood 
still in perfect silence — awed by the mere sight of the 
speaker. 

A little later occurred the monster meeting at Mul- 
laghmast, where four hundred thousand people assem- 
bled. It was here that Hogan, the sculptor, crowned 
the liberator while the thousands shouted themselves 
hoarse. There was no mistaking O'Connell's meaning 
on this occasion : 

"At Mullaghmast," he said, "we are on the precise 
spot where English treachery — aye, and false Irish 
treachery, too — consummated a massacre that has never 
been imitated save in the massacre of the Mamelukes 
by Mahomet Ali. It was necessary to have Turks 
atrocious enough to commit a crime equal to that per- 
petrated by Englishmen. But do not think that the mas- 
sacre at Mullaghmast was a question between Protestants 
and Catholics — it was no such thing. The murdered per- 
sons were, to be sure, Catholics, but a great number of 
the murderers were also Catholics, and Irishmen, because 
there were then, as well as now, many Catholics who 
were traitors to Ireland. But we have now this advan- 
tage — that we have many honest Protestants joining us 
— joining us heartily in hand and heart, for old Ireland 
and liberty. I thought this a fit and becoming spot to 
celebrate, in the open day, our unanimity in declaring our 
cietermination not to be misled by any treachery — there 



DANIEL O'CONNELE 309 

shall be no bargain, no compromise with England — we 
shall take nothing but repeal, and a parliament in College 
Green. You will never by my advice confide in any 
false hopes they hold out to you; never confide in any- 
thing coming from them, or cease from your struggle, 
no matter what promise may be held out to you, until 
you hear me say I am satisfied ; and I will tell you where 
I will say that — near the statue of King William in Col- 
lege Green. No, we came here to express our determina- 
tion to die to a man, if necessary, in the cause of old 
Ireland. We came to take advice of each other, and 
above all I believe you came here to take my advice. I 
can tell you I have the game in my hand — I have triumph 
secure — I have repeal certain, if you but obey my advice." 

The multitude cheered wildly at this promise of vic- 
tory. The orator surveyed the hundreds of thousands, 
and then cautioned them to permit him to move slowly. 
He never in any of his speeches lost sight of the danger 
of precipitate action. Nor did he forget to play to 
the pride of the people. His tribute to the men of Kil- 
dare was similar to the tribute he had for every com- 
munity : 

"Oh, how delighted I was in the scenes that I witnessed 
as I came along here to-day. How my heart throbbed, 
how my spirit was elevated, how my bosom swelled with 
delight at the multitude which I beheld, and which I shall 
behold, in the stalwart and strong men of Kildare. I 
was delighted at the activity and force that I saw around 
me, and my old heart grew warm again in admiring the 
beauty of the dark-eyed maids and matrons of Kildare. 
Oh, there is a starlight sparkling from the eye of a Kil- 
dare beauty that is scarcely equaled, that could not be 
excelled, all over the world. And remember that you 
are the sons, the fathers, the brothers and the husbands 
of such women, and a traitor and a coward could never 
be connected with any of them. Yes, I am in a county 



310 THE IRISH ORATORS 

remarkable in the history of Ireland for its bravery and 
its misfortune, for its credulity in the faith of others, 
for its people judged of the Saxon by the honesty and 
honor of their own natures. I am in a county celebrated 
for the sacredness of its shrines and fanes. I am in a 
county where the lamp of Kildare's holy shrine burned 
with its sacred fire, through ages of darkness and storm 
— that fire which for six centuries burned before the high 
altar without being extinguished, being fed continuously, 
without the slightest interruption, and it seemed to me 
to have been not an inapt representation of the continu- 
ous fidelity and religious love of country of the men of 
Kildare." 

That O'Connell confidently expected success is cer- 
tain from the fact that during the summer of 1843 he 
was actually planning the parliament for College 
Green. At this time the world was ringing with his 
name. His popularity was at high tide. He actually 
refused his autograph to the czar of Russia because of 
his despotism, and the king of Bavaria accepted it as 
a favor. In Ireland he was passionately loved. Then 
came the blow from Peel. 

The liberator had planned a monster meeting at 
Clontarf, near Dublin, for October eighth, 1843. The 
date fell on Sunday, and another Tara meeting seemed 
assured. The week before the proposed meeting there 
were some disconcerting rumors to the effect that the 
meeting would be proscribed. O'Connell refused to 
credit them. Then came the confirmation of the re- 
port — less than twenty- four hours before the meeting. 
There was something infamous, something murderous 
in the methods of Peel in this instance. An army of 
men thrown without warning into the midst of hun- 
dreds of thousands of men, women and children, as- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 311 

sembled in a lawful manner for a lawful purpose! 
O'Connell did not propose to call his people together 
to have them slaughtered. He sent messengers on the 
fleetest horses that could be procured in all directions 
to warn the people. He succeeded. When Sunday 
morning dawned all was quiet. The people had not 
been gathered in to be murdered. If such was Peel's 
intention he had been foiled. If it was not his pur- 
pose his actions were so suggestive of it that his friends 
have never been able to explain his delay in announc- 
ing the proscription, and his enemies in the house of 
commons denounced him for it. 

But the government was not satisfied. A few days 
later Daniel O'Connell was indicted and arrested on a 
charge of conspiracy. He was prepared for the worst. 
He told his son that if he should be arraigned for 
treason he would make his confession and prepare for 
death. After giving bail, his first thought was of his 
people. To them he issued an address urging them to 
be patient and peaceful. He then retired to Darry- 
nane to await his trial — a trial which we shall see was 
the same sickening mockery which had always marked 
the trials of Irish patriots. 

VIII 

Lingering in his mountain home by the sea until the 
time set for the trial, O'Connell went back to Dublin, 
where the people rallied about him as a conqueror. He 
went to court in the coach of the lord mayor, followed 
by a procession of aldermen, all repealers, all wearing 
the garb of repealers. The trial itself was a farce. 
The speech of Sheil in defense was the one brilliant 



312 THE IRISH ORATORS 

feature, and it only served to illuminate the surround- 
ing darkness and expose the baseness of the govern- 
ment. The jury was carefully packed, not one Cath- 
olic being on it, notwithstanding the fact that the 
community was overwhelmingly Catholic. Lecky, who 
tries to be fair in treating of Irish subjects, but not 
always with success, is very delicious when he says, 
"An error, which at least one English judge believed 
not to have been unintentional, was made in the panel 
of the jury, and by this error more than twenty Cath- 
olics were excluded from the juror list." This was, 
of course, "an error," but a very ordinary one in those 
enlightened days. Quite naturally O'Connell was con- 
victed. 

The verdict created a sensation throughout the 
world. It was difficult for some nations to under- 
stand. When immediately afterward O'Connell went 
to London and appeared in the house of commons he 
was greeted with wild applause on the liberal side. 
This did not deceive him. He knew that the applause 
was mostly antagonistic to Sir Robert Peel — that most 
of the applauding members were inwardly delighted 
at the humiliation of an Irishman. There were some 
members of the parliament, however, Lord John Rus- 
sell among them, who could not but contemplate with 
feelings of revulsion the shameless travesty of justice. 

When, the latter part of May, judgment was pro- 
nounced, Daniel O'Connell was sentenced to one year 
in prison. He merely imparted respectability to a 
prison. When he went to Richmond Bridewell, which 
he had selected, to begin the serving of his sentence, the 
government gave him an escort of mounted police, and 
behind the police, in deathlike silence, marched thou- 



DANIEL O'CONNELE 313 

sands of sympathizers and patriots. At the gate of 
the prison the multitude gave a lusty cheer for the 
"criminal." 

His life in prison was made as comfortable as pos- 
sible. He had pleasant quarters, the companionship 
of other political "criminals" with whom he was per- 
mitted to dine, and was given every possible liberty 
by the keeper of the prison who naturally felt ashamed 
of his job. Here he issued a letter to the people of 
Ireland begging them to maintain the peace, and hither 
came addresses from lovers of liberty and enemies of 
despotism all over the world. 

When, at length, the house of lords reversed the ac- 
tion of the court and ordered his liberation, the people 
of Dublin determined to have a triumphal procession 
from the prison to O'Connell' s house. The scene was 
marvelous. Thousands lined the way. All the trades 
were out with bands and banners. There were not 
enough equipages in Dublin to meet the demand and 
others were sent from -distant places. The lord mayor 
and others marched in their robes of office to do honor 
to the man who was a "criminal" to England, a hero 
to all the world beside. No policeman was in sight. 
None was needed. The idolaters of this desperate 
culprit voluntarily kept the peace. Riding through the 
streets in an imposing car, when the old parliament 
house was reached, O'Connell ordered the procession 
to pause. Without a word he pointed to the deserted 
parliament house. It was one of his most eloquent 
moments. 

But his work was over. Broken in health and spirit, 
the O'Connell who went into the Richmond Bridewell 
was not the O'Connell who emerged. England had 



314 THE IRISH ORATORS 

broken the back of constitutional agitation, and a more 
militant spirit was abroad in the land. The fight with 
the leaders of Young Ireland, which belongs to the 
sketch of Meagher, was pathetic. It broke the liber- 
ator's heart. 

And then the terrible famine came upon the land. 
The people were unable to help themselves, and Eng- 
land appeared indifferent. While England was debat- 
ing, America was sending food. It was during this 
period that the Duke of Cambridge said that condi- 
tions were not so bad in Ireland. "I understand," he 
said, "that rotten potatoes and seaweed, or even grass, 
properly mixed, afford a very wholesome and nutri- 
tious food. We all know that Irishmen can live upon 
anything, and there is plenty of grass in the fields even 
if the potato crop should fail." This was the language 
of a Christian prince. Referring to this brutal com- 
ment, O'Connell in his last speech in Ireland said : 

"There is the son of a king — the brother of a king — 
the uncle of a monarch — there is his description of Ire- 
land for you. Oh, why does he think thus of the Irish 
people? Perhaps he has been reading Spencer, who 
wrote at a time when Ireland was not put down by the 
strong arm of force or defeated in battle — because she 
never was defeated — but when the plan was laid down 
to starve the Irish nation. For three years every portion 
of the crop was trampled down by the horses of mounted 
soldiery ; for three years the crops were destroyed, and 
human creatures were found lying behind ditches, with 
their mouths green from eating sorrel and the grass of 
the field. The Duke of Cambridge, I suppose, wishes 
that we should have such scenes again enacted in this 
country. And it is possible that in the presence of some 
of the illustrious nobility of England a royal personage 
could be found to utter horrors of this description? I 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 315 

will go over to England and see what they intend to do 
for the Irish — whether they are of opinion that the Irish 
are to feed on grass or eat mangrel-wurzel. If that 
should be attempted — and may God avert the possibility 
of the occurrence — I do not hesitate to say it would be 
the duty of every man to die with arms in his hand." 

And to England O'Connell went — the mere shadow 
of his former self. Disraeli has left us a picture of 
his last appearance in the house of commons where he 
tried to soften the English heart in the presence of the 
cruel calamity that had befallen his people. Old, fee- 
ble, broken-hearted, his words were scarcely audible. 
He was heard in a sort of reverential silence. Even 
his old political enemies were kind and considerate, and 
the queen sent to inquire after his health. But his 
mission was a failure. 

Ordered by his physicians to a warmer climate, he 
set out for Rome. Passing through France he was 
received with every mark of respect, the people con- 
gregating in front of his hotels. He gave no heed. 
He no longer cared for worldly honors. When he 
reached Genoa, he was compelled to stop. Addresses 
poured in upon him from all parts of the world, but he 
did not read them. The public services that were held 
in all the churches of Lyons in France to pray for his 
recovery, touched him. But the end had come, and on 
March fifteenth, 1847, Daniel O'Connell passed from 
the scene of his triumphs. His heart, which he be- 
queathed to Rome, was deposited in an urn, and pre- 
sented to Saint Peter's. The funereal obsequies in 
Rome were marvelously impressive — all pomp and 
magnificence, befitting a king among men. When his 
body reached Dublin in August it was received with 



316 THE IRISH ORATORS 

royal honors ; and his grave is in the famous cemetery 
of Glasvenin, in Dublin. It is a shrine. 



IX 



The Daniel O'Connell of Darrynane would have 
delighted Sir Walter Scott. At his beautiful home in 
the. mountains and by the sea almost inaccessible by 
ordinary travel for many years, he lived like a me- 
dieval chief of a clan. Darrynane House, on the wild 
and rocky coast of Kerry, was in the midst of scenery 
that appealed to the expansive nature of the orator. 
He could look out, summer and winter, on the great 
waves of the sea that broke on the rock-bound coast. 
On the west and north of the house rugged mountains 
reared their crests two thousand feet, in the air, while 
the east view was bounded by a chain of rocks that 
divide the bay of Darrynane from that of Kenmare. 
Close to the house was a twelve-acre tract, rocky and 
irregular, with charming paths winding through the 
irregularities. In the midst of this shrubbery-covered 
space was a little circular turret crowning an ivied 
rock where the liberator loved to withdraw for medi- 
tation. The house itself, having been added to from 
generation to generation to meet practical m require- 
ments, had no special architectural plan. The place 
was remote, and until 1837, when a new road was built 
from Cahirciveen, men were employed to drag car- 
riages with ropes along five miles of road that was 
too precipitous for any other method of travel. 

Throughout his life O'Connell dispensed a lordly 
hospitality. The table was always laid for thirty 
guests and no one, no matter what his political creed, 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 317 

religious belief or circumstance, was ever turned away. 
One Protestant minister, writing in the Dublin Chris- 
tian Journal, has left a record of his impressions of 
Darrynane and its master in which he enthusiastically 
praises O'Connell for his infinite tact, geniality and 
generous hospitality. True to the idea of a chief of 
a clan, O'Connell always sat at the head of the table, 
and at breakfast wore his little green repeal cap. The 
house was comfortably but not magnificently fur- 
nished. Some of the furniture had been purchased at 
the auction of Lord Clare's belongings, and O'Connell 
loved to surprise his guests with the remark — "These 
were once present at high Orange orgies. I bought 
them at the auction of that petticoat Robespierre, Lord 
Clare. ,, 

Throughout his life O'Connell was passionately 
fond of hunting. At such times O'Connell was in his 
element, as he walked or ran from rock to rock, keep- 
ing in sight of the dogs. The magnificence of the 
scenery, the pure invigorating air, the brilliant sun- 
shine, the baying of the dogs echoing from crag to 
crag, acted upon him like wine and he was wont to 
laugh and shout and jest with his party like a schoolboy 
out on a lark. Mr. Howitt, who visited Darrynane in 
1835, has described the mode of living there as that 
of an elegant country gentleman. Between the rocks 
and the sea there stretched a beautiful meadow which 
was a favorite promenade and playground for the 
peasantry, and it was the practise of O'Connell on 
Sunday afternoons, to take his family and walk among 
the peasants, exchanging jests with them, and watching 
them in their dancing and games. To these simple folk 
he was a veritable chief. He heard their troubles, ad- 



318 THE IRISH ORATORS 

vised them in their difficulties, composed their quarrels, 
settled their differences, and his word meant more to 
them than the decree of the highest court in Ireland. 
In 1835 a cowardly attempt was made to create the im- 
pression that he was a cruel or indifferent landlord, 
and some of the English papers teemed with libelous 
stories of the condition of his tenants. W. E. Forster, 
an English writer, visited Darrynane about this time 
and satisfied himself that the charges were without 
foundation. Lecky also credits him with being an 
ideal landlord, and cities in justification of this view 
his action during the cholera epidemic of 1834 when 
he wrote his agent to spare no expense in alleviating 
the sufferings of the people; to provide medical atten- 
tion, to see that all the poor about Darrynane had a 
meat diet. "Be prodigal of my means," he wrote, 
"beef, bread, mutton, medicines, physician, everything 
you can think of." 

Little wonder that the man who was abused by the 
English press for accepting the annual tribute of his 
people for services rendered on the ground that he 
was enriching himself on the credulity of his country- 
men should have found himself in old age considerably 
embarrassed, and died a comparatively poor man. 

It has been said that there was no sentiment or po- 
etry in the nature of O'Connell. The best evidence to 
the contrary is to be found in his letter to Walter 
Savage Landor, written from Darrynane in 1838 : 

"Were you with me amidst the Alpine scenery sur- 
rounding my humble abode listening to the eternal roar 
of the mountain torrent as it bounds through the rocky 
defiles of my native glens, I would venture to tell you 
how I was born within the sound of the everlasting wave, 






DANIEL O'CONNELL 319 

and how my dreamy boyhood dwelt in imaginary inter- 
course with those who were dead of yore, and fed its fond 
fancies upon the ancient and long faded glories of that 
land which preserved Christianity when the rest of now 
civilized Europe was shrouded in the darkness of godless 
ignorance. Yes, my expanding spirit delighted in these 
day dreams, till, catching from them an enthusiasm which 
no disappointment can embitter, nor accumulating years 
diminish, I formed the high resolve to leave my native 
land better after my death than I found her at my birth, 
and, if possible, to make her what she ought to be — 

" 'Great, glorious, and free, 

First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea.' " 

Such a letter was never written by one barren in 
sentiment, or unappreciative of poetry. 

The life of O'Connell in Dublin was necessarily 
quite different from that of the lordly man of leisure 
who followed his dogs day after day into the moun- 
tains. After lighting his own fire, he was accustomed 
to sit down in his library and work from five o'clock 
until breakfast was ready at eight-thirty, and two 
hours later he would start to court, almost always 
walking for the exercise. At three-thirty o'clock, 
when the work in the courts was over, he would hurry 
to the office of the Catholic association, where he 
would look over the mail, write an enormous number 
of letters and petitions, and then on home for dinner. 
After dining he would mingle with his family until 
six-thirty, when he invariably retired to his library, 
where he studied until nine-forty-five, at which time 
it was his practise to retire. Few men could have 
withstood such a strain, but his was a constitution of 
iron. 



320 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Great, robust, fighting man of the world though he 
seemed to be, there was a deeply religious strain to his 
character. He maintained a priest always at his home 
at Darrynane. After the death of his wife in 1837 he 
made a retreat at the Mount Melleray Abbey, near 
Nantes, which was occupied mostly by Irish monks. 
He reached the abbey after dark and was met at the 
outer gate by a procession of monks, who sang one of 
their grand anthems. When, upon kneeling, the Te 
Deum Laudamus was intoned he was profoundly 
touched. He listened to an address of welcome, and 
then retired to solitude, speaking thereafter only to the 
abbot, and devoting the whole time to prayer and med- 
itation. Admirers who called were refused admission, 
and he entered heart and soul into the religious atmos- 
phere of the place. 

X 

Of O'Connell the orator there can be but one opin- 
ion — he was one of the most marvelous the world has 
known. John Randolph of Roanoke, himself one of 
the foremost orators of America, after having heard 
him, described him as easily the first orator in Europe. 
Duvergier, the French critic, after having listened to 
him, said : "I know of no living orator who communi- 
cates so thoroughly to his audience the idea of the 
most profound and absolute conviction." Wendell 
Phillips, the most polished, one of the most brilliant 
masters of the art of oratory that America has pro- 
duced, in his eloquent lecture on O'Connell says that 
"broadly speaking, his eloquence has never been 
equaled in modern times." And again he says: "I 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 321 

remember the solemnity of Webster, the grace of Ev- 
erett, the rhetoric of Choate; I know the eloquence 
that lay hidden in the iron logic of Calhoun; I have 
melted beneath the magnetism of Sargent S. Prentiss 
of Mississippi, who wielded a power few men ever 
had. It has been my fortune to sit at the feet of the 
great speakers of the English tongue on the other side 
of the ocean. But I think all of them together never 
surpassed, and no one of them ever equaled O'Connell. 
Nature intended him for our Demosthenes. Never 
since the great Greek has she sent forth any one so 
lavishly gifted for his work as a tribune of the people." 
And still later, in dwelling upon O'Connell's versatility, 
he said : "Webster could awe a senate, Everett could 
charm a college, and Choate cheat a jury; Clay could 
magnetize the millions, and Corwin lead them captive. 
O'Connell was Clay, Corwin, Choate, Everett and 
Webster in one." 

O'Connell introduced a new note into British ora- 
tory. When the other great British speakers had con- 
fined their efforts largely, almost wholly to parliament 
and the courts, O'Connell sought his audience in the 
great masses, the unlettered millions. How unutter- 
ably silly would have been a Burkean oration before 
the million spread out upon the hill of Tara! It was 
the prime purpose of O'Connell to deliver his message 
and to strike conviction to the hearers. "A fine 
speech," he once said, "is a great thing, but, after all, 
the verdict is the thing." Consequently he adapted his 
style and his language to his audience. He did not 
confuse them with close reasoning, bemuddle them 
with a fine show of learning — he spoke a language they 
could understand. He used a canvas too immense for 



322 THE IRISH ORATORS 

delicate shading. He had to employ strong and vivid 
coloring, and his strokes were necessarily bold rather 
than subtle. This was responsible for the charge of 
coarseness which has been lodged against his art. All 
through his comparatively fair and highly illuminative 
monogram, Lecky, the historian, recurs continuously 
to the use of the words "mob oratory" in describing his 
popular style. He could not mean by this that O'Con- 
nell appealed to mobs. His audiences were famous for 
their peaceful demeanor. "Mob oratory" is oratory 
used on a mob — and with Lecky the mob is the great 
unsung millions. It was a new thing in O'Connell's 
day to appeal to "the mob." It was not the fashion. 
No great Irish orator previous to the liberator under- 
took it. 

Aside from his personal magnetism and command- 
ing appearance, the secret of O'Connell's success lay 
in his consummate knowledge of human nature. He 
knew its intellectual limitations and he never went be- 
yond them. He was never tempted to explode Dis- 
raelian epigrams above their heads to amuse himself 
with the pyrotechnics. He understood their likes and 
dislikes, their prejudices and passions, and he played 
upon their emotions at will. He never marred the ef- 
fect of a strong speech upon the crowd by over-adorn- 
ment. Sheil, who was a master rhetorician, once said 
that O'Connell "often threw out a brood of sturdy 
young ideas upon the world without a rag to cover 
them." 

It should be remembered that while his work was 
largely before the millions, he was not limited to 
what Lecky so loves to call his "mob" style. In his 
monogram on O'Connell the English historian, in com- 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 323 

paring the orator's speech to the multitude and that 
at the bar of the house in claiming his seat, says : "To 
those who would understand O'ConnelFs power and 
the versatility on which it so largely depended, it is 
instructive to compare his promises to the Catholic as- 
sociation with his speech on the same subject at the bar 
of the house. This speech at once established his par- 
liamentary position. Clear, pointed, admirably rea- 
soned and admirably arranged, without the slightest 
tinge either of egotism or declamation or bad taste, it 
was a legal argument of the best kind, delivered with 
perfect simplicity of gesture, with a consummate 
beauty of voice and with complete self-possession of 
manner/' Thus we are justified in the conclusion that 
his "mob" speeches were deliberately planned, and with 
consummate art. 

Few orators have been so fortunate in their physical 
appeal to the senses. Grattan, Curran, Emmet, Sheil 
and Meagher were small men, not the least impressive 
to the eye. O'Connell was a man of royal aspect. His 
voice was seductively musical — the most musical, ac- 
cording to Disraeli, ever heard in the house of com- 
mons. It was soft, of great compass, capable of ex- 
pressing every imaginable emotion. His eyes, light in 
color, and full, flashed or beamed or burned according 
to the sentiment expressed. His contemporaries all 
mention the expressibility of his mouth. His gestures 
were free and bold, not in the least suggestive of elocu- 
tion and yet infinitely graceful and apt. There was 
nothing in his manner indicative of preparation. His 
manner was easy, and without effort. Wendell Phil- 
lips, who heard him, says in his lecture : "We used to 
say of Webster, This is a great effort,' of Everett, 'It 



324 THE IRISH ORATORS 

is a beautiful effort,' but you never used the word 
'effort' in speaking of O'Connell. It provoked you 
that he would not make an effort." 

He was a master of characterization. The London 
Times he contemptuously dubbed, "The Old Lady of 
the Strand"; the clever Stanley he called "Scorpion 
Stanley"; the Duke of Wellington was denounced in 
one of his speeches, which greatly shocked the English 
public, as "the stunted corporal." His most bitter and 
famous invective was leveled at Disraeli, certainly not 
without provocation. 

O'Connell's invective against Saurin, the Orange at- 
torney-general who practised his persecutions through 
such a long period of years with the evident conniv- 
ance of the government, is famous in the literature of 
denunciation, and created a profound sensation at the 
time it was delivered during the Magee trial. Another 
of his famous invectives was aimed at Lord Leveson 
Gower, chief secretary of Ireland, whose defense of 
some official scamp impelled O'Connel to express an 
opinion of the type of politician ordinarily assigned to 
the position of secretary in Dublin. 

"Their juvenile statesmanship is inflicted upon my un- 
happy country. I have heard that barbers train their ap- 
prentices by making them shave beggars. My wretched 
country is the scene of his (Gower's) political educa- 
tion — he is the shave-beggar of the day for Ireland. I 
have now done with the noble lord. I disregard his 
praise — I court his censure. I can not express how 
strongly I repudiate his pretensions to importance, and 
I defy him to point out any one act of his administration 
to which my countrymen could look with admiration of 
gratitude, or any other feelings than those of total dis- 
regard. His name will serve as a date in the margin 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 325 

of the history of Dublin Castle — his name will sink into 
contemptuous oblivion." 

After the delivery of this speech the secretaries 
for Ireland were quite frequently referred to as 
"shave-beggars." 

When the Tories took office and appointed an Eng- 
lishman to a judicial position in Ireland, O'Connell 
bitterly resented what he assumed to be an insult to 
the Irish bar. In a burst of tremendous bitterness he 
exclaimed : 



"The Tories have again come in, and their first act 
has been to appoint an Englishman. And what ! Is the 
bar so degraded that it will not call a bar meeting — that 
it will not remonstrate — that it will not protest against 
this insult? Is the spirit of Ireland so far quenched — 
is the love of fatherland so gone by that not one voice 
but mine will exclaim against this profanation of Irish 
talent — this degradation of Irish intellect — this outrage 
upon Irish learning and acquirements — that all, all must 
be passed by and an Englishman placed over our heads ? 
Oh, shame upon those who do not love their country! 
Oh, shame upon those who would allow any pitiful, pal- 
try, miserable political spleen to come between them and 
the genuine expression of their feelings! Oh, shame 
upon those who will allow unnatural divisions with their 
own countrymen to deceive them into being slaves to 
others ! Oh, shame upon those who say we ought to be 
treated as inferiors and branded as slaves in our native 
land ! 

"And what profession is it that is thus treated with 
contempt? One which Hussey Burgh enlightened with 
his brilliant oratory in my own time ; that profession to 
which Ducarry gave a beauty of language consecrated 
by taste, and aided by the powers of a chaste eloquence ; 
that profession in which I have heard the mingled sweet- 



326 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ness of tunes, that came upon me like soft sounding bells, 
and pealing forth with facts beautified with illustration 
in the language of the lamented Yelverton; that profes- 
sion in which I saw scattering around me the brilliant 
coruscations of the ethereal genius of Curran. Yes, a 
genius as brilliant as it was warm — like a star that gives 
its whiteness to the milky way, his mind poured forth 
a flood of light, and its magic was felt by all who came 
within its influence. . . . What, am I to be told that 
a profession which produced Curran has not now among 
its members one who will acknowledge himself an Irish- 
man ? Who will not resent the indignities offered to them 
as Irishmen and as a profession? Oh, if it be so, let 
them wear their dog-collars, and let 'English slave' be 
branded on them, as they slink away from the frown of 
their masters. Let the boys hoot after them as they 
slink to the courts ; let the women spit upon them at the 
Ormond market, as they go along — and let them thus, 
covered with the slime and filth of the country, go like 
cringing sycophants and soulless slaves and crouch before 
their English chancellor." 

O'Connell knew how to reach the heart. One of his 
greatest triumphs in stirring the emotions can not be 
quoted owing to the fact that it was spoken in the 
Gaelic tongue. One evening, while at the hotel in 
Tralee, the people gathered in front demanding a 
speech and the orator appeared at the window and 
addressed them in their native tongue. It was just 
after the massacre of some Catholics and O'Connell 
whipped them into a frenzy of feeling with a marvel- 
ously pathetic picture of a widow searching among the 
dead for her son; laughing in the wildness of her joy 
on turning over the bodies and finding the victim to be 
a stranger, until at length she found her child. It was 
a short speech, but the picture was so horribly graphic, 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 327, 

so overpoweringly pitiful, that the men cursed as they 
wept. 

Now colloquial and now majestic as regality, now 
convulsing the people with laughter and now driving 
them to tears, inciting them to indignation, playing 
upon their pride, their prejudice and their patriotism, 
he was the tribune of the people without a peer. He 
proved that oratory is not alone of value in the parlia- 
ment house or in the courts. He pointed the way to 
forcing legislative action through political agitation in 
the country. He demonstrated that though the 
press be purchased, the courts be polluted, the 
public places be filled with tyrants or weaklings, that 
the liberties and rights of the masses can be subserved 
so long as they can find one eloquent man of genius to 
voice their protest. 



y 



¥11 

[THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 



The Young Ireland Militant Movement ; the Famine ; the 
Uprising of 1848 



IT was about the time that Lamartine gave to the 
world his graphic story of the party of the 
Gironde, that a new party, suggestive of the brilliant 
revolutionary organization by virtue of the extraordi- 
nary brilliancy and youth of its leaders, was born in 
Ireland. This party was born of the popular demand. 
O'Connell, now in his decline after Clontarf, had 
aroused the nation to a realization of its rights, but 
lacked the courage to lead it to battle. The masses 
were calling loudly — "The word, O'Connell, give us 
the word" — and he was silent. And in that silence the 
new Irish party was born — the party known to history 
as Young Ireland. 

In the autumn of 1842, a new paper was launched 
in Dublin which was to become the nucleus of the new 
organization — The Nation. It was the virile voice of 
nationality. It electrified the reawakened intellect of 
Ireland. Its mission was to create a national spirit, to 
develop a national life, to amalgamate all factions, all 
religions, the descendants of all nationalities into one 
harmonious whole, and dedicate it to the cause of inde- 
pendence. Its pages fairly scintillated with the genius 

328 



JHOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 329 

of its writers, and its publication marked the literary 
renaissance of the green isle. The dynamic power of 
The Nation was the genius of Thomas Davis, the 
brilliant poet, whose passion for a restored nationality 
conceived the national movement to go beyond the 
restoration of the parliament and to embrace the crea- 
tion of an Irish literature, an Irish art, an Irish in- 
dustry, and, if need be, an Irish army. His militant 
poetry gave to Erin her Marseillaise, and his vigorous 
prose stirred like the marching of many men. The of- 
fice of The Nation became the recruiting station of 
genius and Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Darcy Mc- 
Gee, Thomas Devin Reilly, Lady Wilde, and that 
Ulster lawyer who was statesman, writer, soldier, 
propagandist, organizer all in one, John Mitchell, en- 
listed for the war. Thus the leaven of Erin began to 
work. 

Then came the calamity that momentarily left Ire- 
land cold, the melancholy death of Davis — a calamity 
converted into a blessing, for his memory became a 
pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, exhorting 
the youth of Ireland to be up and doing. The organ- 
izing genius of Smith O'Brien, the pen of Mitchell, 
the songs of Lady Wilde created an appeal reaching 
down from the drawing-rooms of Dublin to the most 
humble cottage in Kerry. But brilliant though the pen 
of Mitchell, thrilling though the songs of the Irish 
woman, inspiring though the soldierly courage of 
O'Brien, the militant youth would have been seriously 
handicapped in its appeal from the conservative policy 
of the eloquent O'Connell, had it not possessed a 
tongue of fire. This, too, it had — a tongue as eloquent 
as ever yet has lashed the Celtic nature into storm— 



330 THE IRISH ORATORS 

the tongue of the orator of '48, Thomas Francis Mea- 
gher — "Meagher of the Sword." 



In the house on the quay at Waterford, latterly 
known as Cummins Hotel, on August twenty-third, 
1823, Thomas Francis Meagher was born. The home 
into which he entered, if not one of opulence or pre- 
tension, was one of comfort. During the first ten 
years of his life he received his schooling in his native 
city, and there is nothing of record to indicate that 
at this time he had given any evidence of the surpris- 
ing precocity which was so soon afterward to manifest 
itself. It was here, however, that he fed his love of 
Ireland while meandering through the beautiful coun- 
try about the seaport town. The mountains with their 
mystery, the peaceful valleys with their flocks, the gen- 
tle streams, all the manifold beauties of nature spoke 
to his imagination, and no doubt began the develop- 
ment of the poetic fancy which was, in after years, to 
impart such charm to his eloquence. On the beautiful 
eminence of Mount Misery, so wretchedly misnamed, 
about a mile from the city and overlooking the Suir, 
he loved to sit alone, the exquisite panorama of city 
and countryside spread out before him, and looking 
down upon "town and tower, dark groves and distant 
spires, rich meadows and dark cornfields/' permit his 
boyish fancy to run wild. His budding genius thrived 
on solitude. His early playmates were the children of 
his fancy. 

In his eleventh year he was sent to the Jesuit Col- 
lege of Clongowes-Wood, which was situated in the 



THOMAS. FRANCIS MEAGHER 331 

fertile plain in Kildare, and in his letters we find that 
his love of nature, awakened by the hills and rivers of 
his native town, seized eagerly upon "the landscape 
soothing in its tendency, serenely placid, rich, inert, 
contented looking, and dreamy." 

Here in the great building with the round towers he 
spent six years that were to make an indelible impres- 
sion upon his character and to determine the course of 
his career. Brilliant in all his studies, it is significant 
that in English composition he had no peer. In the 
college debating society he was, by common consent, 
the leading member. His genius was in words and 
ideas from his boyhood. 

Sometime after leaving the college he wrote his crit- 
icism of the school. "They talked to us," he said, 
"about Mount Olympus and the Vale of Tempe; they 
birched us into flippant acquaintance with the disrepu- 
table gods and goddesses of the golden and heroic 
ages ; they entangled us with Euclid ; turned our heads 
with the terrestrial globe ; chilled our blood with dizzy 
excursions through the Milky Way; paralyzed our 
Lilliputian loins with the shaggy spoils of Hercules; 
bewildered us with the battle of the frogs and mice; 
pitched us precipitately into England amongst the im- 
petuous Normans and the stupid Saxons; gave us a 
look through the interminable telescope at what was 
being done in the New World; but as far as Ireland 
was concerned they left us like blind and crippled chil- 
dren in the dark." 

When in his seventeenth year he passed over to 
England for the completion of his education at Stony- 
hurst College, where he remained four years. He 
shocked the professor of English literature by reading 



332 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Shakespearian lines with a pronounced Irish brogue, 
called forth the horror of the faculty with his deviltry, 
and maintained his superiority to all his fellows in 
rhetoric, composition and forensics. 

After the fashion of his time, he topped off his edu- 
cation by a continental tour, traversed the Rhine coun- 
try, and lingered lovingly in the old medieval cities 
with their tang of romance and mystery. 

Early in the spring of 1844 he began his profes- 
sional studies at Queen's Inn, Dublin, where he was 
shocked by the superficiality of society and its depress- 
ing tendency to ape English taste. It was the time of 
the trial of O'Connell, when Ireland was facing her 
gravest crisis, and it maddened him to find the town 
filled with soldiers and spies, the hotels overrun by 
supercilious English reporters, the theaters thronged 
with the gay and giddy, and the fashionable section of 
the city aglow with dozens of balls every night. To 
Meagher there was but one redeeming feature to the 
situation — the inspirational note of The Nation, the 
thundering of the repeal orators, the meetings at Con- 
ciliation Hall, where he heard Smith O'Brien denounce 
the inactivity of Ireland and challenge the constituted 
authorities. This was the bugle call he had awaited — 
it made inevitable the course he was to follow. 

II 

When, in the spring of '46, Smith O'Brien conceived 
the idea of organizing the youthful genius of Ireland 
into a militant band of battling patriots through the 
establishment of the parliamentary committee of the 
Repeal Association, Thomas Francis Meagher was 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 333 

made a member of the committee. From the moment 
of his entrance into the organization the fight for the 
liberty of his native isle became the serious business 
of his life. He threw himself into the work with an 
enthusiasm that kept him at his task from twelve 
o'clock to five o'clock every day, and it was during 
this period that he was brought to a realization of the 
practical importance of organization. Content though 
he might have been to devote himself to the mere 
drudgery of the committee, the keen appreciative eye 
of O'Brien almost instantly divined that the genius of 
the new recruit was of an exceptional order, and that 
he could be utilized to better advantage as a protag- 
onist of the cause. Whatever may have been the 
mistakes of O'Brien he can not be charged with an 
inability properly to appraise men. To all the youthful 
converts he assigned a task fitted to their temperament, 
and in Meagher he foresaw the spokesman of the radi- 
cals. Thus was he assigned the duty of speaking at 
Conciliation Hall on February sixteenth, 1846. 

When the slender youth, with the eloquent eyes and 
thrilling voice, faced the audience, familiar with the 
genius of the most brilliant patriots of Erin, he knew 
it to be a critical assembly, but pursuing the policy 
which he never wholly abandoned, he had prepared 
himself with the most painstaking care. The beauty 
of his phraseology and imagery and magnetism of his 
presence made a profound impression and stamped 
him as a new orator in Ireland; while his plea for 
united and concentrated action conducted with dignity 
and decorum disclosed the possession of a mature 
judgment. Underlying it all was the fierce determina- 
tion that Ireland should be free. The opening sen- 



334 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tences set forth concisely the views he never abandoned 
i — the views that finally drove him in chains from the 
land of his nativity. 

"We have pledged ourselves," he said, "never to ac- 
cept the union — to accept the union upon no terms, nor 
any modification of the union. It ill becomes a country 
like ours — a country with an ancient fame — a country 
that gave light to Europe whilst Europe's oldest state of 
this day was yet an infant in civilization and in arms — 
a country that has written down great names on the 
brightest page of European literature — a country that has 
sent orators into the senate whose eloquence to the latest 
day will inspire free sentiments and dictate bold acts — 
a country that has sent soldiers into the field whose cour- 
age and honor it will ever be our proudest privilege to 
record, if not our noblest duty to imitate — a country 
whose sculptors rank high in Rome, and whose painters 
have won for Irish genius a proud preeminence even in 
the capital of the stranger — a country whose poets have 
had their melodies reechoed from the most polished 
courts of Europe to the loneliest dwelling in the deep 
forest beyond the Mississippi — it ill becomes a country 
so distinguished and so respectable to serve as the sub- 
altern of England, qualified as she is to take up an emi- 
nent position and stand erect in the face of Europe." 

Thus, lyrically, he winged his way to the hearts of 
his hearers and prepared the way for the reception of 
his declaration of faith : 

"Thus shall a parliament, molded from the soil, racy 
of the soil, pregnant with the sympathies and glowing 
with the genius of the soil, be here raised up. Thus shall 
an honorable kingdom be enabled to fulfil the great ends 
that a bounteous Providence hath assigned her — which 
ends have been signified to her in the resources of her 
soil and in the abilities of her sons." 




General Thomas Francis Meagher 
From portrait made shortly after coming to the United States 



[THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 335 

To comprehend thoroughly the thrill of delight with 
which the patriots of Ireland hailed the new spokesman 
of repeal it must be borne in mind that Sheil had al- 
ready fallen a pathetic victim to the blandishments of 
London, and O'Connell had given evidence of decline. 
With these two giants of the platform eliminated, 
there had, up until this time, appeared none other to 
take their place. 

Meagher was the spokesman of the New Movement ! 
He appeared upon the scene just at the juncture when 
he was most needed. 

The altered aspect of the nationalist cause in Ire- 
land had grown out of the changed political complex- 
ion of England. The Tories had lost their power and 
the Whigs, under the leadership of Lord John Russell, 
had assumed control. Just previous to the downfall 
of the Peel ministry a conference of the leaders of the 
opposition had been held at the residence of Lord 
John in which O'Connell and his son had participated, 
and the word had gone forth from this conference 
that the Irish leader had insisted that all he asked was 
"a real union — the same laws and franchises in the two 
countries. ,, This fateful assurance fell upon Ireland 
like a pall. Against the prospective alliance between 
the Irish leaders and the Whigs the leaders of the 
younger element entered a vehement protest through 
The Nation. "No repealer," wrote John Mitchell, 
"even would dare to whisper it in the solitude of his 
chamber lest the very birds of the air might carry it to 
an Irish ear." At an exciting meeting in Conciliation 
Hall, Meagher was put forth to voice the bitter dissent 
of the militants. Then came the apostacy of Sheil, 
due to his acceptance from the Whigs, of the mas- 



336 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tership of the mint, and his reelection to the house 
of commons with the votes of Whigs and the covert 
aid of O'Connell. The break between the venerable 
leader and the militant element was now inevitable. 
Determined to defeat the militants by forced marches 
the father of emancipation forced through a meeting 
at Conciliation Hall a resolution explicitly pronounc- 
ing against any methods of amelioration other than 
those of a peaceful character. The lines were drawn. 

The final disruption came a little later. The dates 
were July twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, 1846 — 
vital dates in Irish history. 

The scene was one of the most impressive in the 
political history of the island. The genius, the chiv- 
alry of the land were in attendance — young men eager 
for an appeal to arms, old men whose memories 
reached back to the stirring days of '98. In the chair 
sat the lord mayor of Dublin — a splendid figure. 
There sat the son of the venerable leader surrounded 
by the field marshals of Old Ireland. There, too, with 
Meagher, Mitchell and the brilliant leaders of the 
new movement, sat the son of Grattan and the dashing 
Smith O'Brien. 

Brushing aside the importunities of O'Brien to de- 
sist from action tending to disruption, John O'Connell 
introduced resolutions calculated to drive the younger 
men from the organization, and, confronted by the 
amazing proposition that there is never any justifica- 
tion for an appeal to arms, O'Brien went over into the 
ranks of Young Ireland. 

The climax came on the second day. Once more 
Young Ireland put forward its most brilliant orator. 
When Meagher rose he was received coldly. The 



[THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 337, 

meeting was packed against him. Gradually, as he 
warmed to his subject, the audience began to thaw. 
Indifference yielded to amazement, and then to ad- 
miration, and then applause. It was the Sword Speech 
■ — destined to scintillate over Europe and to take its 
place among the classics of the English language. As 
he launched like an inspired poet into his lyrical apos- 
trophe to the sword the effect was magical. He held 
the audience within the hollow of his hand. 



"Then, my lord," cried the orator, "I do not condemn 
the use of arms as immoral; nor do I conceive it pro- 
fane to say that the King of Heaven — the Lord of Hosts 
— the God of Battles — bestows His benediction upon those 
who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. 

"From the evening on which in the valley of Bethulia 
He nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the 
drunken tyrant in his tent down to this, our day, on 
which He has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Bel- 
gian priest, His almighty hand hath ever been stretched 
forth from His throne of light to consecrate the flag of 
freedom — to bless the patriot's sword. Be it in the de- 
fense, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I 
hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my lord, it 
has sometimes taken the shape of a serpent and reddened 
the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like 
the anointed rod of the high priest, it has at other times, 
and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the 
freeman's brow. 

"Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword! No, my 
lord, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the 
banner of the Bavarians, and through those cragged 
passes struck a path to fame for the present insurrec- 
tionists of Innsbruck. 

"Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword! No, my 
lord, for at its blow a grand nation started from the 
waters of the Atlantic ; and by its redeeming magic, and 



338 ,THE IRISH ORATORS 

in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled colony 
sprang into the attitude of a proud republic— prosperous, 
limitless, invincible. 

"Abhor the sword — stigmatize the sword! No, my 
lord, for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine 
old towns of Belgium — scourged them back to their own 
phlegmatic swamps, and knocked their flag and scepter, 
their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the 
Scheldt. 

"My lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation 
to govern herself, not in this hall, but upon the ramparts 
of Antwerp. This, the first article of a nation's creed, 
I learned upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly 
estimated and the possession of the precious gift was 
purchased by the effusion of generous blood." 

By this time the audience was swaying like a forest 
in a storm. The applause was born of ecstasy. \ In- 
furiated by the effect, the son of O'Connell, in the 
spirit of an angry boy, broke in with a protest that pre- 
vented the completion of the most wonderful oration 
that stands to the credit of the historic building in 
which the genius of Ireland had so frequently burst 
into flame. 

Then it was that the disruption came. Young Ire- 
land had made and won its fight in the legitimate 
methods of debate, was muzzled in the erstwhile cradle 
of Irish liberty, and when Meagher passed from the 
platform, the militants of Ireland marched in a body 
from the hall. Meagher had reached the soul of Ire- 
land. It was "Speranza" (Lady Wilde) who put in 
words the verdict of the people: 

"Thus in glory is he seen, though his years are yet but 
green — 
The Anointed, as head of our nation. 



^THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 339 

For High Heaven hath decreed that a soul like his must: 
lead — 
Let us kneel then in deep adoration. 

"Oh, his mission is divine — dash down the Lotus wine — * 

Too long in your tranced sleep abiding ; 
And by Him who gave us life, we shall conquer in the 
strife, 

So we follow but that young chief's guiding." 



Ill 



That the arrogant attitude toward the leaders of 
Young Ireland did not represent the real impulses of 
Daniel O'Connell was made evident in a scene enacted 
in the study of the Merrion Street home of the old 
warrior where, immediately following the secession, 
he sat in deep depression surrounded by some friends. 
Turning to one of his followers, he authorized him to 
invite the young men back into the association upon 
their own terms. Just as the messenger of peace was 
about to leave, John O'Connell entered the room, and 
learning of the intention of his father, promptly vetoed 
the proposition of conciliation. Thus does the son of 
the "uncrowned king" ever appear during this period 
in a sinister light. A little later the great leader did 
write a personal invitation to Meagher to return, but 
by this time the die had been cast and the Rubicon 
crossed. 

Driven from the one organization perfected for 
patriotic purposes in Ireland, the young seceders called 
a mass meeting early in January of 1847 in the rotunda 
where the Irish Confederation was born. In a set of 
resolutions, the new society defined its methods, ideas 



340 THE IRISH ORATORS 

and purposes. With a subtlety that did credit to their 
judgment, the seceders disclaimed the slightest ani- 
mosity toward the Repeal Association, basing their sep- 
aration solely upon a difference as to the policy to be 
pursued. Legislative independence for Ireland, abso- 
lute independence of all English parties, the combina- 
tion of all classes and creeds in the interest of the na- 
tional cause — these were the striking features of the 
declaration of the Rotunda. Thus Young Ireland came 
into possession of an organization of its own. 

After all it was a happy event for Ireland. The once 
powerful O'Connell, now in his decline, was very soon 
to pass from the scene. The year of desolation had 
come. The gaunt specter of famine was stalking 
through the land knocking at the cottage doors. Bat- 
tling against starvation, the spirit of nationality began 
to flicker in the minds of the people. Men in need of 
bread are apt to forget their country. At such an 
hour, with the English ministry refusing adequate suc- 
cor to the starving, and with the once trusted leaders 
of the repeal movement playing sycophants to the 
English ministers in return for patronage, the spirit 
of nationality might have died down in desolation and 
dismay. Might? Nay, would, but for the injection at 
this critical juncture of the virile young militants of the 
new organization. They immediately set themselves 
the task of reviving the drooping spirits of the patriots. 
In every village, in every settlement, wherever a cor- 
poral's guard of patriots could be found, a Confedera- 
tion club was established. In a surprisingly short time 
more than ten thousand young, enthusiastic and de- 
termined men were mustered into the new army of 
freedom. These men were prepared to vote together 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 341 

■ — more significant still, prepared to fight together 
should their leaders give the word. 

It was in connection with their plans for constitu- 
tional agitation for legislative independence that this 
little band of young men conceived the plan that was 
to be so successfully put into operation by Parnell more 
than a generation later. This contemplated the election 
to the parliament in London of a resolute band of capa- 
ble and courageous men who could be depended upon 
to make Irish interests cross and impede and dominate 
the commons. 

This idea, which met with the hearty commendation 
of Meagher, did not measure up to John Mitchell's con- 
ception of the need of the hour. To the forceful editor 
of The Nation the time for parliamentarian parley had 
passed — the time had come for an appeal to arms. 
While not adverse to an appeal to the sword, Meagher 
did not believe that the people had been adequately 
prepared to meet the power of the imperial army, and 
this division of opinion led to a special meeting of the 
Confederation and a debate of several days' duration 
ensued. This debate was to put a period to one phase 
of Meagher's revolutionary career, for his speech on 
this occasion was to be the last of his "constitutional" 
addresses. Even in this speech he shadowed forth the 
spirit that he was suppressing with difficulty at the 
time. 

"You know well," he said, "that I am not one of those 
tame moralists who say that liberty is not worth a drop 
of blood. Against this miserable maxim the noblest vir- 
tue that has served and sanctified humanity appears in 
judgment. From the blue waters of the bay of Salamis 
—from the valley over which the sun stood still and 



342 JHE IRISH ORATORS 

lit the Israelite to victory — from the cathedral in which 
the sword of Poland has been sheathed in the shroud 
of Kosciusko — from the convent of St. Isadore, where 
the fiery hand that rent the ensign of St. George upon 
the plains of Ulster has crumbled into dust — from the 
sands of the desert where the wild genius of the Alger- 
ine so long has scared the eagle of the Pyrenees — from 
the ducal palace in this kingdom where the memory of 
the gallant and seditious Geraldine enhances, more than 
royal favor, the nobility of his race — from the solitary 
grave, which, within this mute city, a dying request has 
left without an epitaph — oh, from every spot where hero- 
ism has had its sacrifice, or its triumph, a voice breaks 
in upon the cringing crowds that cheer this wretched 
maxim, crying out, 'Away with it, away with it !' Would 
to God, Sir, that we could take every barrack in this 
island this night, and with our blood purchase the inde- 
pendence of our country." 

It was inevitable that a speech, so insidiously dan- 
gerous and appealing, should have attracted the atten- 
tion of the Castle, and from the hour of its delivery 
Meagher was a marked man. The Confederation 
voted on this occasion as Meagher voted, but it felt 
deep down in its heart as Meagher felt when he gave 
utterance to the words just quoted. The debate served 
notice on the ministry in London that policy alone pre- 
vented the Confederation from issuing a call to arms. 

The debate had scarcely closed when Meagher found 
himself involved in a contest which gave an opportunity 
for a reiteration of his militant opinions and his de- 
testation of the Irish alliance with the Whigs. A 
vacancy occurring in the parliamentary representation 
of his native city of Water ford he determined to try 
conclusions with the candidate put forth by the Whigs 
with the support of the O'Connellites. With all the 



JTHOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 343 

burning impetuosity of his fiery nature he plunged into 
the fight. Not only did he face the miserable open 
enemies of his country's independence, but he encoun- 
tered all the animosity of the old school of repealers 
who clung tenderly to the "uncrowned king." It is 
significant of the spirit of the orator that even the op- 
position of his father failed to dampen his spirits. His 
speeches on the hustings were the most passionate of 
his career. He spared neither the devotee of old Ire- 
land nor the Whigs, and he pounced upon the place 
hunters with a ferocity that commanded the admiration 
even of his enemies. 

"Well then," he exclaimed, "is Old Ireland still your 
cry ? Old Ireland indeed ! I am not against Old Ire- 
land, but I am against the vices that have made Ireland 
old. The enmity I bear to the legislative union is not 
more bitter than the enmity I bear to those practises and 
passions from which that union derives its ruinous vi- 
tality." 

Turning to the "bigot who would sacrifice his nation 
to the supremacy of a sect," he hurried on to the place 
hunters. 

"Down with the place hunter — he who would traffic 
on a noble cause, and beg a bribe in the name of liberty. 
He who would spurn the people, upon whose shoulders 
he had mounted to that eminence from which he had 
beckoned to the minister and said, 'Look here — a slave 
to hire — a slave of consequence — a valuable slave — the 
people have confided in me/ " 

At the time of Meagher's candidacy Waterford had 
a population of twenty-eight thousand people of whom 



344 THE IRISH ORATORS 

but seven hundred were qualified to vote. Throughout 
the contest his magnetic personality and inspiring elo- 
quence easily made him the popular idol. The dis- 
franchised thousands, the toilers, the cottagers, the 
poor, gave him their applause, their love, their adora- 
tion, but they had no votes to give, and when the bal- 
lots were counted it was found that he had been de- 
feated by twenty votes. 

If the young leader was chagrined at his defeat he 
had no time to nurse his humiliation, for it was the 
year of '48 — the glorious year of the people, the critical 
year for kings and crowns. The spirit of liberty hov- 
ered over Europe and long-slumbering peoples awoke 
to a realization of their strength. In France the people 
had fought behind barricades in the streets of Paris 
and rewon their liberties. Once more the despondent 
of Ireland turned hopefully to the nation that had been 
saved at Fontenoy by the valor of an Irish brigade, 
just as they turned to France in '98, as the lamented 
Emmet turned a little later. Seizing the psychological 
opportunity the leaders of the Irish Confederation 
called a meeting to formulate an address to the French 
people. This meeting was infested by the spies of the 
government. This Meagher knew, and knowing, he 
defiantly threw down the gauntlet to England in a 
speech as revolutionary and incendiary as has ever been 
heard in Ireland. 

"If the throne stand as a barrier between the Irish peo- 
ple and their supreme right," he said, "then loyalty will 
be a crime, and obedience to the executive will be treason 
to the country, I say it calmly, seriously, deliberately; 
it will then be our duty to fight and fight desperately." 



.,- THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 345 

At the utterance of these words the assembly rose as 
one man and the orator was given a tremendous ova- 
tion. 

"The opinions of Whig statesmen have been quoted 
here to-night," he continued. "I beg to remind you of 
Lord Palmerston's language in reference to the insurrec- 
tion in Lisbon last September — 'I say that the people 
were justified in saying to the government: "If you do 
not give us a parliament in which to state our wrongs 
and grievances we shall state them by arms and by 
force." ' 

"I adopt those words and I call upon you to adopt 
them." 

By this time the speaker's meaning had grown plain. 
He was reversing his speech in reply to Mitchell. He 
was making his appeal to the sword specific. 

"The storm that dashed down the crown of Orleans 
against the column of July," he continued, "has rocked 
the foundations of the Castle. They have no longer a 
safe bedding in the Irish soil. To the first breeze that 
shakes the banners of the European rivals they must give 
way. Be you upon the watch to catch that breeze. When 
the world is in arms — when the silence which for two 
and thirty years has reigned upon the plain of Waterloo 
at last is broken — then be prepared to grasp your free- 
dom with an armed hand, and hold it with the same." 

It was not until the conclusion that Meagher threw 
his personal challenge in the faces of the governmental 
spies that were sprinkled through the crowd. 

"Citizens of Dublin, you have heard my opinions. 
These opinions may be very rash, but it would not be 
honest to conceal them. The time has come for every 



346 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Irishman to speak out. The address of the university 
declares that it is the duty of every man in the kingdom 
to say whether he is a friend or a foe to the government. 
I think so, too, and I declare myself an enemy of the 
government." 

This speech created a profound sensation, and the 
following week the orator was arrested, along with 
Mitchell and O'Brien, on the charge of sedition. Thus 
was the challenge accepted. 

When these three popular heroes passed through the 
streets of Dublin to the police office to give bail, they 
probably could, by the raising of a hand, have pre- 
cipitated a riot that would have developed into a revolu- 
tion within twenty- four hours. A vast multitude went 
with them. It packed the streets from curb to curb, 
men in ugly mood, with flashing eyes, and feverish 
brows. It marched with that comparative silence which 
bodes no good to the enemy. All the passions of the 
race, all the pitiful memories of the years — evictions, 
massacres, legal assassinations — all marched with the 
throng. The heroes in front embodied the burning 
soul of Ireland. The multitude behind — mob if you 
will — was the brawn of a mighty people prepared to 
strike. 

Meagher, Mitchell and O'Brien enter the police office, 
furnish bail, come out again. At the head of the mul- 
titude they proceed to the council room of the Con- 
federation. The crowd is augmented at every intersec- 
tion. The windows along the line of march are packed 
with men with tense faces as Ireland goes marching 
by. From the lamp-posts — significant in the hour of 
revolution — are clinging boys and men. The rain 
comes down in torrents, as Ireland goes marching by. 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 347 

Reaching the council rooms Meagher appears at the 
windows. The multitude stands silent in the rain. And 
then in the spirit and manner of a commander, giving 
the word to charge, the orator defies the power of im- 
perial England. 

"The language of sedition is the language of freemen. 
There shall be no duplicity in this matter. I am guilty 
of an attempt to sow disaffection in the minds of the 
people. I am guilty of an attempt to overthrow this gov- 
ernment, which keeps its footing on our soil by brute 
force and by nothing else. The news this morning an- 
nounces that Vienna is in the hands of the people. Dub- 
lin must be in the hands of the people. Stand by us, 
citizens, and it shall be done." 

Thus defiant, Meagher passes over with the deputa- 
tion from the Confederation to Paris, where he meets 
Lamartine, only to find the man of the fiery pen a man 
of prudence and policy. This did not prevent him, 
however, from talking treason to the new leaders of the 
French. If Lamartine was cold, Ledru Rollin favored 
the despatch of instant assistance to the Irish. At- 
tending the opera, frequenting the cafes, Meagher 
thought only of his country. The signs of the revolu- 
tion in Paris were still fresh. The barricades were 
hardly down. The wourided patriots still lingered in 
the hospitals — their rooms filled with the fragrance of 
flowers. And Meagher hurried home. 

IV 

Meanwhile the followers of the Confederation 
throughout Ireland were busily engaged in preparing 
for the conflict of arms which seemed inevitable. All, 



348 THE IRISH ORATORS 

who could, purchased guns and ammunition, and the 
poor saved their money, deprived themselves, and 
bought pikes. During the early months of '48 Dublin 
once more began to take on something of the dignity 
of an industrial community, albeit the one prevailing 
industry appeared to be the manufacture of pikes. 
Meagher and Mitchell were compelled to share in pop- 
ularity with David Hyland — Pike Maker. No one fa- 
miliar with the situation could fail to know that an 
armed conflict was inevitable, that a crisis was impend- 
ing. While the government of the Castle was entirely 
cognizant of the conspiracy of the revolutionists who 
made no serious effort to conceal their purpose, it con- 
tented itself at this juncture by passing the "treason- 
felony act" which gave it the power to exile for nat- 
ural life any one found guilty of sedition. 

Taking advantage of the cat and mouse policy of the 
government, Meagher and his compatriots determined 
upon the holding. of a series of meetings throughout 
the island for the purpose of arousing the people and 
organizing them for the uprising. The first of this 
historic series of meetings was held under the auspices 
of the Sarsfield Club at Limerick in honor of "The 
Prosecuted Patriots," for Meagher, Mitchell and 
O'Brien had not yet been tried. It was while the fes- 
tivities were in progress that a mob composed of the 
Old Irelanders, who had worshiped at the shrine of 
O'Connell, gathered outside the banquet hall, made an 
attack upon the building, breaking the windows with 
stones. O'Brien, going to the door to remonstrate, 
was struck by a flying missile. This cowardly attack by 
Irishmen upon men who were endangering their lives 
and liberties to serve the national cause so infuriated 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 349 

Meagher that his speech on this occasion surpassed in 
seditious sentiments anything he had ever said before. 

"Yes, from this day out," he exclaimed, "you must lie 
down and eat your words. Yes, you — you starved 
wretch, lying naked in that ditch, with clenched teeth 
and staring eye, gazing on the clouds that redden with 
the flames in which your hovel is consumed — what mat- 
ters it that the claw of hunger is fastening in your heart 
— what matters it that the hot poison of the fever is 
shooting through your brain — what matters it that the 
tooth of the lean dog is cutting through the bone of that 
dead child of which you were once the guardian — what 
matters it that the lips of that specter there, once the 
pride and beauty of the village where you wooed and 
won her as your bride, are blackened with the blood of 
the youngest to which she has given birth — what matters 
it that the golden grain which sprung from the sweat 
you squandered on the soil has been torn from your 
grasp — what matters it that you are thus pained and 
stung — thus lashed and maddened? Hush — beat back 
the passion that rushes to your heart — die — die without 
a groan — die without a struggle — die without a cry — 
for the government which starves you desires to live in 
peace." 

The next meeting was to be at Water ford, the native 
place of the most eloquent orator of the militants, and 
learning of the indignity to which Meagher and 
O'Brien had been subjected at Limerick, the patriots 
of Water ford marched in an immense concourse to 
Carrick to meet and welcome them on the way. Every 
mile was a triumph, every moment an ovation. It was 
on such occasions as this that Meagher shone at his 
best. The vast crowd, the tumult, the concentrated 
passion, called forth the dramatic instinct which was 
a predominant trait of his character, As the throng 



350 THE IRISH ORATORS 

was entering Water ford it passed along the quay where 
a British man-of-war was moored. With a theatrical 
gesture, and a contemptuous glance at the man-of-war, 
Meagher halted the procession, saying that "he would 
select that place whence to remind his hearers that their 
country was not in their own hands — that it was held 
by force." 

The meeting in Waterford was a monster one and 
here Meagher, knowing of the presence of the spies, 
boldly urged upon the people the necessity of procuring 
arms at once. This advice, given with an effrontery 
that must have staggered the sycophants of the Castle, 
was repeated at Kilkenny, where the orators were mag- 
nificently received. 

Following these meetings Meagher returned to Dub- 
lin for his trial. On the way to the court he was accom- 
panied by the clubs of the Confederation — the whole 
of Dublin one seething mass of determined and defiant 
men. The jury in the trial of both Meagher and 
O'Brien had been packed. Nevertheless, enough decent 
patriotic men slipped into the jury box to hang the 
jury. Walking proudly from the room sacrilegiously 
called the court of justice, Meagher placed himself at 
the head of the procession of the waiting clubs and 
led it on its ominous march through the streets to the 
headquarters of the Confederation, where he voiced 
an indignant protest against any attempt to pack the 
jury in the case of Mitchell. Indeed the Confederation 
seriously considered the feasibility of a rescue in the 
event of his conviction and but for the fear of Meagher 
that, such an undertaking might react seriously upon the 
cause this doubtless would have been done. 

The expected happened. The jury was notoriously 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 351 

packed against Mitchell, who was convicted in accord- 
ance with instructions from the government. The 
scene which followed at Newgate — the Irish bastile — 
beggars description. All the approaches were guarded 
with soldiers, police and lancers. The streets fairly 
swarmed with infuriated patriots. But for the decision 
of the leaders to attempt no rescue, these men in the 
streets, aflame with hate, with arms concealed upon 
their persons, could have swept soldiers, police and 
lancers into perdition. The speech of Mitchell from the 
dock aroused the fighting blood of the men in the 
room, and the spirit spread like wild fire into the 
crowd outside. Terrified by the mutterings, petrified 
by the scowls of the people, the officials attempted to 
push Mitchell through the doorway and into a rear 
room to prevent a rescue. This indignity was too much 
for some of his friends, who made a rush toward him. 
It might have been the beginning of the end. It would 
have been but for the advice of Meagher. From the 
realization of this fact Meagher was never after able 
to escape. 

At a great mass meeting which followed the de- 
portation of the patriot editor and agitator, the orator 
exonerated the Confederation and took upon himself 
the blame. They who would condemn — and many 
have — must ascribe Meagher's action to the head and 
not the heart. No tenderer words have ever fallen 
from mortal tongue than those in which he took upon 
himself the blame, and the famous passage beginning 
with the words, "There is a black ship upon the south- 
ern seas to-night," gave to posterity a tribute to John 
Mitchell that has never been surpassed in beauty or in 
eloquence. It is well for Irishmen to know that Mitch- 



352 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ell understood. The love these two men bore each 
other was that of brothers. 

The deportation of Mitchell, however, nerved the 
Confederation to final action. It was swiftly followed 
by a formal conspiracy. The council of the Confedera- 
tion became a revolutionary committee. The decision 
was reached to throw down the gauntlet to the govern- 
ment after the ripening of the harvest, but the gov- 
ernment, now seriously concerned, determined to act, 
and the leaders of Young Ireland were arrested. 

The officers with their warrant found the most bril- 
liant of the leaders at the home of his father in Water- 
ford, where he was placed under arrest. The news 
spread throughout the city that Meagher had fallen into 
the hands of the watch-dogs of the Castle. The chapel 
bells were rung. The people poured into the streets at 
the sound of the tocsin as in the days of the Parisian 
revolution. One word passed from lip to lip — "rescue/' 
"rescue," "rescue." One approving nod from the 
young orator, and the officers of the Castle would have 
been as helpless as a leaf on a raging sea. 

Meagher appeared at the window and appealed to 
the people to desist — only to retire despairing of suc- 
cess. Once more he undertook the task of calming 
the multitude which by this time had taken on the 
character of a revolutionary mob, and this time his 
pleading had some effect. 

Meanwhile a military force had arrived upon the 
scene and been drawn up before the house — a handful 
of men against an army. Messengers brought the 
word now that the sturdy men of Carrick-on-Suir were 
pn the march to meet the arrested leader and his mili- 



L THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 353 

tary escort to do battle, and Meagher despatched 
friends to dissuade them and turn them back. 

At six o'clock a carriage drew up at the house. The 
young hero made a last passionate and affectionate 
appeal to his fellow townsmen to refrain from violence, 
the dragoons formed on either side of the vehicle with 
drawn swords, and followed by one solid mass of sul- 
len humanity the procession started through the streets 
of the city in which all the shops had been closed as a 
tribute to the genius of its favorite son. Old men and 
young, with tears streaming down their cheeks, held 
forth appealing aims toward the carriage, crying 
piteously, "Give us the word. For God's sake give us 
the word." 

That trip to Dublin must .have shaken the faith of 
the government in the loyalty of \b& people. Time and 
again Meagher was forced to leave the carriage to 
plead with the people who were determined that the 
travesty of the Mitchell case should not be re-enacted. 
After reaching the capital and giving bond, he was 
picked up bodily, .and on the backs of the cheering 
populace he was carried through the streets, pulsating 
with revolutionary passion, to his hotel, where he ap^ 
peared at the window and delivered what was destined 
to be his last speech in Dublin. 

Almost immediately Meagher left Dublin in the hope 
of arousing the people of the south. Looming two 
thousand four hundred feet above the plain of Femhan 
about midway between the towns of Clonmel and Car- 
rick-on-Suir, is the famous mountain of Slievenamon 
where, according to tradition, an ancient Irish chief 
once sat upon a stone seat and watched his warriors 



354 THE IRISH ORATORS 

engaged in the chase upon the plains below. It was 
from this inspiring eminence that Cromwell surveyed 
the country and exclaimed, "That is a country worth 
fighting for." Here, on July sixteenth, 1848, was held 
the most impressive meeting associated with the up- 
rising of '48. The word had gone forth that Meagher 
and his compatriots would here make answer to the 
government of the Castle. It was Sunday — a day of 
insufferable heat. Meeting at Carrick, the clubs of the 
Confederation marched in military order to the moun- 
tain. The people came from the counties of Kilkenny, 
Water ford and Wexford — pushing their way over the 
roads to the mountain packed with sweltering men, 
women and children. The soldiers at Carrick were 
under arms, but the people, thoroughly aroused, paid 
no heed, but pressed up the steep ascent. 

It was a theatrical Meagher that appeared before 
the countless multitude. He wore a green cap with • a 
gold band, and a splendid tri-colored sash was wrapped 
about him. His oration on this occasion was one of the 
most magnificent of his career. Looking down upon 
the old men who had followed O'Connell, he said : 

"O'Connell, like all great men, had his faults — but he 
had his virtues and he had his victories. This I will 
say, that he preached a cause that we are bound to see 
out. He used to say, T may not see what I have labored 
for. I am an old man — my arm is withered — my epitaph 
of victory may mark my grave — but I see a younger gen- 
eration with red blood in their veins, and they will do 
the work/ " 

Here the orator paused to note the effect while a 
roar of applause echoed from the mountain. Then 
with a sweeping gesture he added : 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 355 

"Therefore it is my ambition to decorate these hills 
with the flag of my country." 

Thus did he make his appeal for the amalgamation 
of Old and Young Ireland in behalf of the liberty of 
Ireland. Then he followed with a passage of classic 
eloquence : 

"A scourge came from God that ought to have stirred 
you to greater action. The potato was smitten ; but your 
fields waved with golden grain. It was not for you. To 
your lips it was forbidden fruit. The ships came and 
bore it away, and when the price rose it came back, but 
not for the victims whose lips grew pale, and quivered 
— and opened no more." 

It is recorded by those present that this reference to 
the deadly work of the famine, when men, women and 
children starved in the midst of plenty, created a sen- 
sation in the crowd — to many of whom the vivid pic- 
ture suggested a loved one starved through the cruel 
indifference of the government. 

"Did I say they opened no more?" he added, after a 
pause. "Yes, they did open in Heaven to accuse your 
rulers. Those lips, fresh and beautiful with the light of 
God, supplicated His throne, and He has blessed our 
cause. The fact is plain that this land, which is yours 
by nature and by God's gift, is not yours by the law of 
the land. There were bayonets therefore between the 
people and their rightful food." 

Thus with a master touch the orator reached the 
heart, and thus he tried to steel the arm of the peo- 
ple. The spies hurried reports of the meeting to Dub- 
lin, and the authorities of the Castle, in a panic of fear, 
hastened to issue the order that precipitated the clash 



356 THE IRISH ORATORS 

— the order to the people to give up their arms. Ac- 
cepting the challenge with alacrity, Meagher instantly 
met it with a counter-order to the people to stand by 
their arms and await the commands of their leaders. 
Wherever the order of the Castle was found — there 
side by side was the order of Thomas Francis Meagher. 
Thus was the issue made so clear that even the blind 
could see and understand. 



V 



Meanwhile, in the absence of Meagher the council of 
the Irish Confederation met in Dublin to determine 
upon what course of action to pursue. The rank and 
file of the clubs, the masses of the people, appeared to 
favor an immediate appeal to arms, but O'Brien 
thought them unprepared to try conclusions with the 
trained militia, and upon the motion of John Dillon 
the members of the clubs were instructed to retain and 
conceal their arms. On the twenty-ninth of July a 
committee was appointed to assume absolute control 
of the revolutionary movement, a committee with func- 
tions somewhat similar to the committee of public 
safety during the French Revolution. Meagher was 
placed at the head of this committee, the other mem- 
bers being John Dillon, Richard O'Gorman, Thomas 
D. McGee and Thomas D. Reilly. The revolution at 
this juncture seemed a certainty and the spirits of the 
leaders ran high with joyous anticipation. But alas, 
the committee was destined never to meet ! 

Immediately after its organization O'Gorman left 
for Limerick to take charge of the movement there, 
and a little later the tip was passed on to the leaders 



JHOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 357, 

still lingering in Dublin of the intention of the govern- 
ment to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Con- 
fronted with this ominous danger, Meagher, McGee 
and Dillon held a hurried meeting in the council room 
and an emissary was despatched to Paris to plead for 
intervention, another was sent to Belfast and thence 
to Glasgow, where at the proper moment he was to 
arouse the Irish there and lead them against the troops 
stationed in that city. This accomplished, Meagher 
spread out the map of Ireland and entered into a con- 
ference with Halpin, the secretary of the Confedera- 
tion, who was instructed to communicate at once with 
the officers of the clubs of the capital and direct them 
to be ready to rise and barricade the streets the mo- 
ment the news was received that the leaders were in 
the field. 

Owing to the absence of war vessels and its prox- 
imity to the fighting counties of Wexford, Water ford 
and Tipperary it was agreed that the insurrection 
should be launched in Kilkemry. Another reason for 
the selection was that Kilkenny was on the eve of its 
annual cattle show and it was thought that in the 
event of a siege the possession of the cattle would be 
an- item worth considering. 

The news spread rapidly that the leaders of Young 
Ireland were in the field and the militant young pa- 
triots of Dublin awaited expectantly and eagerly the 
instructions that never came. They had been told to 
await the orders of their leaders and no orders were 
received. Halpin had not understood the instructions 
given him by Meagher. The weapons remained con- 
cealed. The pikes, purchased and preserved for the 
patriots' hour, were never used. 



358 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



Meanwhile the leaders in the field were battling 
against disheartening odds. Smith O'Brien was at 
Carrick, where the entire country was aglow with rev- 
olutionary heat and the people were clamoring to be 
led, when an element of discord was injected into the 
situation. The precise source of this discordant note 
may never be known. Suffice it to say that the traitors 
to the cause of the nation succeeded in persuading the 
people that Carrick alone would be expected to grapple 
with the government and that the annihilation of the 
town and its people would be the inevitable result. So 
pronounced did this feeling become that it was consid- 
ered a concession when the leaders were granted per- 
mission to remain in the town overnight. Word was 
then sent out at once to all the clubs of the neighboring 
towns to meet at Carrick on the morrow. 

With this understanding Meagher set out in the 
night for Water ford with the intention of placing 
himself at the head of one thousand sturdy fighting 
men who had pledged themselves to be ready to follow 
him in any enterprise at the slightest notice. Reaching 
his native city he sent for his leaders. To his chagrin 
he was informed that they could not accompany him 
back to Carrick without the consent of Father Tracy, 
who had been instrumental in their organization. The 
perplexed leader hurriedly scoured the city in search 
of the priest, but he was not found, and finally, in dis- 
couragement and despair, Meagher turned his back 
upon the town of his nativity, and the great majority 
of his men never knew that he had called upon them 
in the crisis and called in vain. 

It was thus that the insurrection failed. A succes- 
sion of unexplainable blunders accounts, to some ex- 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 359 

tent, for the failure of the people to rise — Halpin's 
blunder preventing the attack of the Dublin clubs upon 
the Castle, the blunder of Father Tracy — if blunder 
it was — depriving Meagher of the one thousand men 
upon whom he had depended as the nucleus of his 
army. That there were some weaklings among the men 
is probable and that traitors abounded in the clubs and 
among the people is certain. The plans of the insur- 
rectionists miscarried at every turn, and the leaders, in 
dismay and bewilderment, failing of the support upon 
which they had reason to rely, separated, each to seek 
as best he might the security of his person. Some 
nought and found the succor of the sea and entered 
upon a voluntary exile, while others fell into the hands 
of the government and faced the ignominy of the scaf- 
fold as so many Irish heroes had done before. 

Among the latter was Thomas Francis Meagher, 
who was arrested at Rathgannon on August twelfth. 
A little more than two months later he was tried be- 
fore a jury notoriously packed at Clonmel Court 
House, where he was doomed to die the most cruel and 
ignominious death for the crime of loving the liberty 
of his country. Throughout this crisis he remained 
worthy of his role as one of Ireland's most exalted. 
Dressed with his customary neatness in a plain black 
frock coat, black silk stock and light colored waist- 
coat, he faced his accusers with dignity and firmness ; 
and when asked why sentence of death should not be 
pronounced he made his famous last speech in Ireland : 

"I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost 
me," he said. "I am here to regret nothing I have ever 
done — to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here 
to crave with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the lib- 



360 THE IRISH ORATORS 

erty of my country. Far from it ; even here— here where 
the thief, the libertine, the murderer have left their foot- 
prints in the dust ; here on this spot, where the shadows 
of death surround me, and from which I see my early 
grave in an unanointed soil — encircled with these ter- 
rors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous 
sea upon which I have been wrecked still consoles, ani- 
mates, enraptures me." 

Whether it was a compassion for the youth of the 
leaders of Young Ireland, or the warning of a con- 
science because of the infamy of their undoing must 
remain to conjecture, but the death sentences were 
changed to deportation for life, and on July ninth, 
1849, Thomas Francis Meagher, one of the most bril- 
liant ornaments of Erin, was borne from the scene of 
his many triumphs and his one great failure to the dis- 
mal quietude of Van Dieman's Land. 



VI 



The story of Meagher's life in exile is briefly told. 
To one of his ardent and restless nature the monoto- 
nous humdrum of existence in the No-Man's Land of 
the far-away seas must have been one unspeakable 
ennui. While in his solitude at Lake Sorrel he luxuri- 
ated in yachting in a little boat which he tenderly 
called The Speranza in honor of one of the fiery poets 
of '48. There on the lake he divided his time between 
the water and the few books of his attractive cottage. 
There, in the spring of '51, he was married to Miss 
Bennett, the beautiful daughter of a farmer of the 
locality. Thence, in the early winter of '52, he made 
his escape, and, after many exciting adventures on the 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 361 

sea, lie landed in New YorK City;-— the land of his 
dreams-— on May twenty-sixth. 

Henceforth his story is part of American history. 
The first nine years of his life in exile were devoted to 
lecturing and writing. His brilliant and picturesque 
eloquence and the interest felt in him as one of the 
apostles of liberty created a demand for him upon the 
platform. He appeared frequently in all the large cit- 
ies and made a tour of the newer western country, 
where his fame had spread. A year after his arrival 
in New York he joined John Mitchell in the publica- 
tion of a new journal called The Citizen, which imme- 
diately took precedence over all other papers dedicated 
to the cause of liberty in Ireland. In 1858 he made a 
tour of Central America for Harper's Magazine, 
writing a series of articles on Holidays in Costa 
Rico that possess a magic charm, although they have 
never been printed in book form. And then came the 
assault on Fort Sumter — and the American Republic 
was torn by cruel strife. The brilliant dashing part 
played by Meagher as the commander of the Irish 
Brigade must be read in the hero tales of American his- 
tory. The marvelous charge of Meagher's men with a 
green sprig in their caps at Fredericksburg is one of 
the most stirring military movements in the history of 
the world. He surrendered his commission when the 
last of his brave men were gone — the victims of their 
valor. 

At the close of the war He was appointed secretary 
of the territory of Montana by President Johnson and 
he set to work to rid the territory of the political cor- 
ruptionists who then infested it. Unhappily he did not 
live to carry out his plans. While on one of his tours 



362 (THE IRISH ORATORS 

of inspection he fell from a boat into the swift currenl 
of the Missouri River near Fort Benton and his body 
was never recovered. Thus it was, that Thomas Fran- 
cis Meagher, one of the most brilliant and heroic char- 
acters in the calendar of time, died on July first,. 1867. 

Of Meagher it may be truly said that his entire life 
was dedicated to the cause of liberty. Wherever he 
was placed he found work to do, and he possessed the 
genius to meet his obligations. His speech on the 
sword alone entitles him to a high place among the 
orators of his century. His relations to the rising of 
'48 would alone make him a treasured memory where- 
ever freedom has a worshiper. His superb gallantry 
at Fredericksburg alone would assure him a place in 
history as among the bravest of the brave. 

Orator, protagonist, soldier, dreamer and doer, 
Thomas Francis Meagher will live in the affection of 
his race as long as the green hills of old Ireland loom 
above the waves. 



VII 



Thomas Francis Meagher, unlike several of the 
great Irish orators, was bountifully blessed by nature, 
and peculiarly fitted for the platform. Presenting an 
impressive appearance, his slender and compact form 
of graceful mien, not a little was contributed to the 
thrilling effects he produced by the flash of his Celtic 
eye, and the rare melody of his musical voice. It 
would be a mistake to assume that his art was not a 
studied one, that it was wholly spontaneous. While 
naturally gifted with a sense of the dramatic, he so 
thoroughly appreciated the value of the theatrical in 



(THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 363 

appealing to a mass of men that he sought and found 
the opportunity to utilize it in his art. If we are to 
credit the records that have come down from those 
who often heard him in the heyday of his power he was 
marvelously expressive in gesture. Added to these ac- 
quired advantages, he had the oratorical temperament 
and he spoke with a fire that was convincing as to the 
intensity of his convictions. In other words, his hear- 
ers always knew that there was a mind and heart and 
soul behind the burning and poetic words that flowed 
with such wonderful fluency from his lips. No one has 
ever known better the human heart, and he played upon 
it like the master that he was. Perhaps the predom- 
inant phase of his oratory was its tremendous intensity. 
This may be accounted for in part by the fact that 
he was always addressing his fellow men upon the 
most serious of subjects — their liberties, their rights. 
In the days of '48 there was little occasion for the 
lighter touches of oratorical entertainment. After his 
dramatic arrest and return to Dublin, when the multi- 
tude, after he had given bond, accompanied him to his 
hotel, he permitted himself an indulgence in some hu- 
morous references to his "military escort" and his in- 
ability to establish fraternal relations with the soldiery, 
but with this exception, his speeches are singularly 
without humor. That this absence of wit and humor 
was premeditated may properly be deduced from the 
fact that he was exquisitely witty in conversation, and 
possessed to a high degree the sense of humor. The 
wrongs he fought impressed him as too serious for 
laughter and he attacked the enemy with his heavy 
artillery. 

He was a master of denunciation, endowed with a 



364 JHE IRISH ORATORS 

vast vocabulary of invective, and he knew how to make 
a terrific arraignment as well as any man in the history 
of Ireland. The passages smacking of his philippic 
were usually brief, but concise and comprehensive and 
all the more intense on that account. Take for ex- 
ample his denunciation of the English lords in his 
speech on The Growth of the National Spirit : 

"Those English lords who never trod on Irish soil — 
who know not the afflictions of the people whose charac- 
ter they defame — who never sympathized with those 
whom they would now coerce; those English lords, in 
whose pictured galleries we would vainly search for the 
stricken image of an Irish peasant, and on whose dam- 
asked tables the Irish famine will not cast its scaring 
shadow ; those English lords to whom the Irish millions, 
on the day of retribution, will address the words of sa- 
cred accusation, 'We were naked and you clothed us not ; 
we were hungry and you gave us not bread; we were 
thirsty and you gave us not drink;' those English lords, 
at this day, renew the enactments that have long since 
brought down upon the English supremacy the curse of 
the Irish province." 

One of the most vicious and telling of his philippics 
followed the imprisonment of O'Brien by the English 
house of commons in an address at a mass meeting in 
Dublin : 

"Till now I have thought it was unEnglish to strike 
a man when he was down. Till now I thought that, 
whether in the grave or in the prison, the foe of Eng- 
land was safe from insult. Till now, I thought the van- 
quished ever claimed her sympathy, and that, in the flush 
of her triumph, her spirit was great, because it was for- 
bearing. 

"Sir, the conduct of England in this instance does not 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 365 

remind me of that country which an old history of some 
centuries has taught me to admire. It does not remind 
me of that England, with the arms and letters of which 
the names of the Alfreds, the Edwards, the Russells, the 
Miltons and the Hampdens are associated. It does not 
remind me of that England by whose sword Spain was 
rescued and Portugal was set free. It does not remind 
me of that England whose guns at Navarino gave suc- 
cor to the Greek, and on whose soil the Polish insurrec- 
tionist has found a refuge. But I am reminded of that 
England whose flag was planted in this country by a 
Wentworth, a Carhampton, a Ludlow and a Cromwell 
— that flag in which the dead liberties of our country, 
as in a red shroud, have been bound up. I am reminded 
of that England whose assassin-blade massacred at Mul- 
laghmast, and whose traitor heart broke faith at Limer- 
ick. I am reminded of that England by whom the Irish 
noble has been dishonored and the Irish peasant has been 
starved." 



To appreciate the genius of Meagher, however, it 
is necessary to go beyond his passages of fierce ar- 
raignment. There have been others quite as adept in 
this field of Irish oratory, and perhaps more so, but 
few of these have coupled with the power to denounce, 
the capacity to appeal to the imagination and the 
senses in sentences of lyrical beauty. In this latter art 
none approach him unless it be Curran and Sheil — the 
latter being the favorite master of Meagher. If he 
had not dedicated his life to the cause of liberty and 
adopted oratory as the weapon, he might have been a 
musician or a poet. He had a remarkable sense of 
rhythm, a vivid imagination, making it natural for him 
to teach through pictures of rare coloring. His word 
pictures are prose poems — literary gems, albeit the very 
exuberance of his fancy sometimes led him into er- 



366 THE IRISH ORATORS 

rors in taste. His apostrophe to the sword, however, 
has a fine literary tone which appeals to the most fas- 
tidious critics. It is as lyrical as song. Suggestive of 
this apostrophe is another passage of splendid beauty : 

"By the soft blue waters of Lake Lucerne stands the 
chapel of William Tell. On the anniversary of his re- 
volt and victory across those waters, as they glitter in 
the July sun, skim the light boats of the allied cantons. 
From the prows hang the banners of the republic, and, 
as they near the sacred spot, the daughters of Lucerne 
chant the hymns of their old poetic land. Then burst 
forth the grand Te Deum, and Heaven hears again the 
voice of that wild chivalry of the mountains which, five 
centuries since, pierced the white eagle of Vienna and 
flung it bleeding on the rocks of Uri. 

"At Innsbruck, in the black aisles of the old cathedrals, 
the peasant of the Tyrol kneels before the statue of An- 
dreas Hofer. In the defiles and valleys of the Tyrol, 
who forgets the day on which he fell before the walls 
of Mantua ? It is a festive day all through his quiet no- 
ble land. In the old cathedral his inspiring memory is 
recalled amid the pageantry of the altar, his image ap- 
pears in every house, his victories and virtue are pro- 
claimed in the songs of the people, and when the sun 
goes down a chain of fires, in the deep red light of which 
the eagle spreads his wings and holds his giddy revelry, 
proclaims the glory of the chief whose blood has made 
his native land a sainted spot in Europe. 

"Sir, shall we not join in this glorious worship and 
here, in this island, anointed by the blood of many a 
good and gallant man, shall we not have the faith, the 
duties, the festivities of patriotism?" 

Surely no one but one imbued with poetic fire could 
have painted that picture, almost religious in its appeal. 
It was introduced almost as a diversion in the midst 
of a speech of argument and denunciation, lulling and 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 367 

^soothing for a moment the senses of the hearers, until 
the closing sentences showed that it had a practical pur- 
pose. This was a trick for which Meagher had a 
fondness, and is again found in the midst of his speech 
on The Irish Confederation: 

"Yes, the spirit that nerved the Red Hand of Ulster 
■ — the spirit that made the walls of Limerick impregnable 
and forced the conquerors of the Boyne to negotiate by 
the waters of the Shannon — the spirit that dictated the 
letters of Swift and the instructions of Lucas — -the spirit 
that summoned the armed missionaries of freedom to 
the altar of Dungannon and gave to Charlemont a dig- 
nity his accomplishments would never have attained — 
the spirit that touched with fire the tongue of Grattan 
and made the lyre of Moore vibrate through the world 
— the spirit that called forth the genius of Davis from 
the cloisters of old Trinity and which consecrates his 
> grave — the spirit that at this day in the city of the Pontiff 
unfurls the flag of Sarsfield and animates the Irish sculp- 
tor as he bids the marble speak the passion of the Irish 
Tribune — this spirit, which the bayonet could not drive 
back, which the bribe could not satiate, which misfortune 
could not quell, is moving vividly through the land. The 
ruins that ennoble, the scenes that beautify, the memories 
that illuminate, the music that inspires our native land, 
have preserved it pure amidst the vicious factions of the 
past and the venal bargains of later years. The visita- 
tion that now storms upon the land has startled it into a 
generous activity. Did public virtue cease to animate, 
the senate house, which even in its desecrated state lends 
an Italian glory to this metropolis, would forbid it to 
expire. The temple is there— the creed has been an- 
nounced — the priests will enter and officiate. It shall be 
so. The spirit of nationality, rooted in our hearts, is as 
immovable as the altar of the Druid, pillared in our soil." 

In view of the imaginative character and the senti- 



368 THE IRISH ORATORS 

mentality of the Celt, the effect of such beautiful pic- 
tures and memories can readily be understood. His 
pictures, at their best, were merely meant to illustrate 
an argument. He appealed to the masses as Rienzi 
did, only he used words where the Italian tribune re- 
sorted to canvas. 

Like all great agitators and protagonists with a 
righteous cause, who are confronted with the apathy 
or indifference of the people, he resorted to the elec- 
tric shock of withering them with scorn to galvanize 
them into action. Very seldom did he flatter his au- 
dience. His purpose was not to contribute to their 
complacency but to plant within them the seed of dis- 
satisfaction, and this he did by interjecting into his 
speeches the most caustic comment upon their condi- 
tion. An example of his method in this direction may 
be cited from his speech on the husting during the 
Gal way election in 1846 : 

"Will you vilely verify the anticipations of Chesham 
Place? Will you basely authenticate the predictions of 
the Castle? Renounced by Cashel, threatened by Wex- 
ford, supplanted in Dundalk, routed from Mayo, what — 
shall the refugees of Whiggery find in Galway a spot 
where, at last, the gold of the cabinet will contaminate 
the virtue of the people? 

"The eyes of Europe are upon you. This is the cant 
of every husting. But this I tell you: THERE ARE 
A FEW MEN YET BREATHING IN SKIBBER- 
EEN AND THEIR DEATH GLANCE IS UPON 
YOU. Vote for the Whig candidate AND THEIR 
LAST SHRIEK WILL PROCLAIM THAT YOU 
HAVE VOTED FOR THE PENSIONED MISERS 
WHO REFUSED THEM BREAD. 

"There is a place, too, called Skull, in the county of 
Cork, the churchyard of which place, as a tenant told 



THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 369 

his landlord the other day, is the only 'red field' in the 
wide, wide county. There are eyes wild with the agony 
of hunger looking out from that fell spot upon you, and 
if you vote against your native land, THE BURNING 
TONGUE OF THE STARVING PEASANT WILL 
FROTH ITS CURSE UPON YOU AND YOUR 
CHILDREN." 

One of his most crushing criticisms of his own peo- 
ple is to be found in nis speech on The Spirit of the 
North, delivered at Belfast. In this speech he shamed 
the people with a striking contrast, setting off the 
people of Switzerland against the people of Ireland. 
After relating the limited resources, the natural dis- 
advantages of the little republic of the Alps, and pictur- 
ing their splendid and triumphant emergence from their 
difficulties by virtue of their courage, determination 
and independence, he turned upon his audience : 

"And you — you who are eight million strong — you who 
boast at every meeting that this island is the finest that 
the sun looks down upon — you who have no threatening 
sea to stem, no avalanche to dread — you who say that 
you could shield along your coast a thousand sail, and 
be the princes of a mighty commerce — you who by the 
magic of an honest hand beneath each summer sky might 
cull a plenteous harvest from your soil, and with the 
sickle strike away the scythe of death— you who have 
no vulgar history to read — you who can trace from field 
to field the evidence of a civilization older than the con- 
quest, the relics of a religion more ancient than the gos- 
pel — you who have thus been blessed, thus been gifted, 
thus been prompted to what is wise and generous and 
great — you will make no effort — you will whine and beg 
and skulk, in sores and rags, upon this favored land — 
you will congregate in drowsy councils and, when the 
very earth is loosening beneath your feet, respectfully 



370 THE IRISH ORATORS 

suggest new clauses and amendments to some blundering 
bill — you will strike the poor rate, aye, fifteen shillings 
to the pound — you will mortgage the last acre of your 
estates — you will bid a prosperous voyage to your last 
grain of corn — you will be beggared by the million — you 
will perish by the thousand — and the finest island that the 
sun looks down upon, amid the jeers and hootings of the 
world, will blacken into a plague spot, a wilderness, a 
sepulcher. God of Heaven, shall these things come to 
pass? What say you, yeomen of the north? Has the 
Red Hand withered?" 

Sometimes he found in history something to inspire 
the Irish heart and animate Irish pride and awaken 
Irish hope. Speaking at Cork he said : 

"A French historian has written that, after the ter- 
rible eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, which swept away 
villages and flocks, and palaces and vineyards, the 
olive trees that grew at the base of the mountain 
were found, amidst the wilderness of ashes, fresh 
and green and vigorous. Thus, after the visitation 
which through the cold bleak winter swept across the 
island, strewing the fields with thousands of our people, 
where the previous harvest a few weeks before waved 
and glittered like a golden banner — spreading desolation 
from the hills of Innishowen to the shore of Bantry, 
ghastlier than that with which the swarthy Sythian, rush- 
ing from the black shores of the Danube, scourged the 
plains of Lombardy — ghastlier than that through which 
the fiery Schismatic of Arabia, propagating his dazzling 
and voluptuous gospel, burned his way from the valley 
of Zeder to the gates of Mecca — ghastlier than that which 
the Venetian renegade gazed upon by Lepanto's gulf 
when he watched — 

" ' — the lean dogs beneath the wall 

Hold o'er the dead their carnival' 

—thus, after this tremendous visitation, which men had 



L THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER 371 

said would sink this country in despair, the fine old spirit 
is found still living in the land — pure, active, brilliant — 
brighter from the torture through which it passed — 
stronger from the calamity with which it struggled. 
Thus, Sir, we find that the heart of Ireland is proof 
against the worst." 

His historic view of the consummation of the union, 
incorporated in an address before the Grattan Club, is 
suggestive of some of the finest descriptive passages of 
Macaulay — a word picture that might well have been 
written by the pen that painted the scene at the im- 
peachment of Warren Hastings : 

"A night, darker than that which fell upon the land 
of Egypt when the Israelite stretched forth his hand to 
Heaven and no man knew his brother, came quickly 
down. Yet high above the senate house the star still 
shone, keeping there its appointed watch, looking down 
upon the island of whose deliverance it had been the 
herald, 'faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall.' 

"In that hall where, in the presence of the students of 
her ancient university, in the presence of the peers and 
peeresses of the kingdom, the Irish Commoners, with 
swords upon their thighs, had pledged their fortunes and 
their lives that no English laws should be obeyed in Ire- 
land — the solemn oath, the splendid ceremony, the faith, 
the chivalry, the genius of the revolution, were that night 
forsworn. 

"Noble and learned highwaymen called ministers — > 
right honorable and learned slaves, barristers and red- 
coats by profession, perjurers by trade — these with a 
retinue of ayes amongst them — when the senate house 
was sacked a heap of coronets and borough prices would 
be parceled out — these criminals entered there that night 
to do the work of conquest, and they did it with impunity. 
An English regiment lined the colonnade — Napper Tandy 
was in exile — the guns of the Leinster Volunteers were 



372 THE IRISH ORATORS 

spiked — Wolfe Tone had bled to death in shackles — in 
vain did Cur ran, leaning against one of the stately pillars 
of the portico, ask the 'rebel' who stood beside him — 
'Where now are your one hundred thousand men ?' " 

The fondness for the surprise stinger at the end of a 
period is manifested in numerous passages, as in his 
picture of the little stream of corruption that is al- 
ways dropping through the Castle yards, and in elec- 
tion times has an extraordinary spring tide, widening 
and deepening, rushing rapidly, sweeping away the 
votes of the people, and finally "throwing up a Whig 
official upon the white shore of England." As in a 
passage in the speech at the complimentary banquet to 
an American sea captain who had brought a boat load 
of provisions for the starving of Ireland, in which the 
orator suggests the question of the stranger as to the 
reason for the high festival in the midst of desolation 
and death, and answers it : "Sir, the citizens of Dub- 
lin have met to pay a compliment to a plain citizen of 
America, which they would not pay, no, not for all the 
gold of Venice — to the minister of England." 

The passion of Meagher, his rapid-fire method of 
attack, his exceptional capacity for condensation, his 
extraordinary ability to paint a picture, to find an il- 
luminating analogy, to draw an indictment, to run the 
gamut of emotions, to coin a phrase, to crucify with a 
characterization, make him unique even among the 
Irish orators. Added to this, his wonderful vocabulary, 
his mastery of the music of words, the exalted lyrical 
quality of his finest passages, impart to his speeches a 
literary tone that is lacking in some of Ireland's more 
virile orators. 



VIII 

ISAAC BUTT 

The Long Lean Years; the Fenian Brotherhood; the Amnesty 

Association; the Organization and Early Days of 

the Home-Rule Movement 

THE period intervening between the downfall of 
the Young Ireland movement and the appearance 
of the Parnell movement was one of the most dismal 
and discouraging in the history of the long war for 
legislative independence. The fate that befell O'Con- 
nell's plan for a constitutional agitation for the repeal 
of the union had discredited constitutionalism in the 
minds of the masses; and the ease with which the up- 
rising of '48 was put down disclosed the difficulty of 
accomplishing anything by force of arms. The only 
spectacular feature of these long lean years was the 
Fenian movement, and it, too, was suppressed with an 
iron hand. Aside from the Manchester martyrs, the 
popular imagination was not fired to any appreciable 
degree by any great popular leader. 

And yet there was a leader whose political and pro- 
fessional activities linked Young Ireland with Par- 
nellism — a leader more practical than Meagher and in- 
finitely more eloquent than Parnell. He stood beside 
Smith O'Brien as he received the brutal sentence of the 
court. He battled for four years, with a courage al- 
most equal to that of Cur ran, to save the unfortunates 

373 



374 THE IRISH ORATORS 

who were caught in the dragnet of Fenianism. Indeed, 
the brilliancy, the eloquence, the courage and capacity 
he exhibited in defense of his Fenian clients can only 
be compared with the efforts of Curran in defense of 
the victims of '98. And he went further than Curran 
— he followed and fought for his clients after the 
prison doors had clanged upon them. In behalf of Erin 
he capitalized their conviction. He aroused and or- 
ganized the country to a united and determined effort 
to obtain their release. And when he had awakened 
the people from their timid lethargy through the ac- 
tivities of the Amnesty Association he had conceived, 
he directed his attention to the perfection of a political 
organization to continue the fight for the restoration 
of a parliament in College Green. 

The word "Home Rule" was given to the vocabulary 
of British politics by Isaac Butt. 

The few years during which he led the Home-Rule 
party in the house of commons were not prolific of re- 
sults. He modeled with faulty clay — the best availa- 
ble from his resources. But he did create a party, he 
did revive a drooping hope, he did compel the English 
statesmen to reckon again with Ireland, and he did go 
ahead through the seeming wilderness, facing and 
fighting the battle of the pioneer, to blaze the path the 
more militant Parnell was to tread to more spectacular 
triumphs. 

Brilliant, brainy, lovable — a charming character, an 
entertaining genius, a pure patriot, a politician and a 
gentleman — Isaac Butt performed the thankless task 
of leading a forlorn hope and paid the penalty of his 
failure with a broken heart. But as the years have 
gone and men have looked back upon the splendid pre- 



ISAAC BUTT 375 

paratory work he did, the impression has grown that 
among the great and brilliant men of Ireland, none is 
more richly deserving of the gratitude and remem- 
brance of the little green isle than Isaac Butt. 



There was little in the early environment or educa- 
tion of Isaac Butt to give promise of the splendid spirit 
of nationality which dominated the latter years of his 
life. He was born in Ulster — in the home of a Pres- 
byterian minister. He first looked out upon the world 
from the village of Glenfin on September sixth, 1813. 
His early years were spent near the Gap of Barnes- 
more, a line of hills, picturesque and beautiful, albeit 
draped in shadows. Upon these hills the boy was wont 
to look and dream, and it was under the inspiration of 
their mystery that his imagination, which always im- 
parted something of poetry to his temperament, was 
developed. His father appears to have been a prosy 
type of preacher, in no sense inspirational. His mother, 
however, was a woman of rare mentality and original- 
ity, clever as a conversationalist, and highly imag- 
inative, and it was from her that, Isaac Butt inherited 
his genius. 

Of his early education we know little beyond the fact 
that he studied at the Royal School, Raphoe, and en- 
tered Trinity College in 1832. Here his genius flow- 
ered, and he entered upon a career which has prob- 
ably never been surpassed, if equaled, in the history of 
that venerable institution. In 1835 he took his first 
degree, and one year later he became a LL.B. In 1840 
he became an M. A. and a LL.D. And while he was 



376 THE IRISH ORATORS 

taking these degrees he was not burying himself com- 
pletely in the text-books, but was feverishly active out- 
side the curriculum. It was while he was a student at 
Trinity that he published a translation of the 
"Georgics" of Virgil and other classics. While still 
an undergraduate he founded the Dublin University 
Magazine, and, while acting as editor, wrote copiously 
on political and economic subjects and found the time 
to contribute the series of graceful and pensive stories 
under the title of Chapters of College Romance. Nor 
did this limit his college activities. He plunged with 
eagerness into the work of the famous Historical So- 
ciety which has played so prominent a part in the ora- 
torical development of so many of the subjects treated 
in this book. Devoting himself with remarkable as- 
siduity to the development of an oratorical style, par- 
ticipating with exceptional brilliancy in the debates, 
he almost immediately took first rank among the stu- 
dents. 

That he made a profound impression upon the fac- 
ulty may be properly deduced from his appointment 
to the professorship of political economy in 1836 — be- 
fore he had completed his studies — and he continued to 
lecture during the next five years. It was during the 
period of his professorship that his attention was first 
directed to the imperative necessity of some radical 
remedial legislation relative to the land. It was the 
custom of Parnell, in later years, to characterize his 
predecessor in the leadership of the Irish party as 
"Professor." Fortunate it was for Ireland that Butt's 
professorial duties directed his studies into the channel 
of land legislation. 

Meanwhile he was preparing himself for the practise 



r ISAAC BUTT 377 

of law, and when, in 1841, he severed his connection 
both with the college and the magazine to concentrate 
his energies upon his profession, he almost immedi- 
ately found himself with a large and lucrative cli- 
entele. In his thirty-first year he was made a Queen's 
Counsel. 

It was during the first years of his practise that Butt 
began to succumb to the blandishments of politics — a 
trade peculiarly fascinating to the Irish temperament, 
and holding forth promise of rich reward to one of his 
ability and political proclivities. It is not to be won- 
dered that Butt entered politics as a pronounced re- 
actionary, as a champion of the ascendency and an 
outspoken enemy of the project of repeal. He had long 
breathed the loyal air of Ulster. He had been nur- 
tured in an ultra-conservative household. The leisure 
hours of his Dublin life had been largely spent within 
the eminently respectable and reactionary precincts of 
the Dublin Conservative Society, which regularly met 
in a house in Dawson Street to direct a counter agita- 
tion against the Repeal Association. His friends and 
affiliations were mostly among the gentry, where pa- 
triotism was subordinated to self-interest. His first 
important cause was confided to him by the old cor- 
poration of Dublin, which sent him as junior counsel, 
in 1840, to plead their case at the bar of the house of 
lords, and while he failed to persuade that body to 
repeal the Municipal Reform bill, he increased his rep- 
utation as a lawyer of resource and erudition and an 
orator of more than ordinary persuasiveness and 
plausibility. 

Thus it was that Isaac Butt became the hope and 
darling of the Dublin conservatives — and thus came 



378 THE IRISH ORATORS 

his selection by the loyalists in 1843 to measure swords 
with the great O'Connell — then at the height of his 
power and popularity — in the great debate on repeal 
before the Dublin Corporation, which then embraced 
many of the wealthiest and most public-spirited citi- 
zens of the capital. This historic encounter really 
marks the introduction of Butt to the public life of Ire- 
land. The debate revolved around the motion of 
O'Connell, "that a petition should be presented to the 
parliament from the corporation of Dublin for the re- 
peal of the union." On the day set for the beginning 
of the discussion the city assembly house was besieged 
by an excited throng seeking admittance, but the lim- 
ited capacity of the building had led to the issuance of 
tickets and the great majority were compelled to con- 
tent themselves by lingering about the doors and win- 
dows. Within the circular building in which seats had 
been specially arranged, every available inch of space 
was occupied. The speech of O'Connell on this occa- 
sion was one of the most masterful of his career. He 
was obsessed with the idea. His forty years of agita- 
tion had been a preparation. He was steeped in his 
subject. He had viewed it from every imaginable an- 
gle. During the greater part of a day he let loose his 
heavy artillery. It required the greatest temerity on 
the part of any one selected to reply. 

And in reply to the uncrowned king, there rose a 
youth of thirty years. He had only been a member of 
the bar for five years, and had only severed his con- 
nection with Trinity two years before. There was 
nothing of prestige behind him. And there he stood, 
facing the expectant crowd which looked upon him 
with mingled commiseration and amusement, a slen^ 



ISAAC BUTT 379 

der youth above the average height, of well-propor- 
tioned figure, and with a plain face that owed its pe- 
culiar charm to the perennial smile that played about 
his lips and beamed in his eye. 

Compared with the masterful argument of O'Con- 
nell, the reply of Butt now seems pitifully inadequate, 
but in the day and generation of the speech there were 
thousands in Ireland who looked upon it as convincing, 
and the reputation of the young lawyer broadened im- 
measurably by the incident. Opposed to the repeal of 
the union, opposed to a fixed tenure for the tenants, 
opposed to the abolition of tithes, opposed to man- 
hood suffrage, opposed to vote by ballot, the Isaac 
Butt of 1843 gave little promise of ever developing 
into the leader of the popular movement for Irish in- 
dependence. 



II 



The following nine years found Butt deep in the 
practise of his profession, in which he held an exalted 
position, but not so exclusively concentrated as to pre- 
vent him from contributing copiously to the conserva- 
tive journals on both sides of the channel. A man of 
scholarly attainments, an entertaining writer, his ar- 
ticles on political topics attracted the attention of the 
conservative leaders of England who had already 
marked him for cultivation and observation. He seemed 
to the typical Englishman of the day a "possible" Irish- 
man. If he entertained the slightest feeling against 
the conquering nation he carefully concealed his feel- 
ing, and all he wrote or spoke could have been uttered 
with perfect propriety and without offense in the most 



380 THE IRISH ~ ORATORS 

exclusive Tory drawing-room of London. It was in 
these days of prosperity that he fell a victim to the 
convivial qualities that were to wreck his peace of 
mind and compromise his leadership when he had at- 
tained a more conspicuous position in the world. He 
did not lack for clients. His legal erudition was not 
excelled at the Irish bar. No one surpassed him in the 
art of cross-examination. None surpassed him in 
court generalship. Few, if any, equaled him in elo- 
quence. No one approached him in his effect upon a 
•jury. Money came easily, and, with the prodigality 
born of genius, he cast it to the winds. William 
O'Brien, in his interesting Recollections, throws a side 
light on his life of this period when he would go down 
to Cork to the Assizes to participate in some great 
cause, and after thrilling the court with his splendid 
eloquence and subtlety, would spend the entire night at 
the card table ; and then, after a cold bath, appear in 
court in the morning, without having closed his eyes, 
and capable of going through another day with unim- 
paired powers. It was during this period that he per- 
formed his first real service in a patriotic cause when 
he appeared in the defense of Smith O'Brien and 
Thomas Francis Meagher when they were tried for 
conspiracy in '48. It does not appear, however, that 
his connection with these cases greatly altered his po- 
litical view-point, though, as we shall see later, the al- 
leged crime and conviction of two such men created 
within his mind a vague feeling of unrest. 

In 1852 he was elected to the imperial parliament as 
a conservative, and the next thirteen years found him 
leading a rollicking gay life in the English capital, un- 
controlled by any great ambition. This was the begin- 




F. B. Yeats, R.H.A. 



Photograph by Geoghegan 



Isaac Butt 



ISAAC BUTT 381 

ning of his undoing as a man. His parliamentary 
career, by interfering materially with his practise, ul- 
timately entangled him with innumerable debts which 
dogged him to the end. It was the day of roysterers 
and wine bibbers in London, and Butt's geniality, his 
brilliancy, his tendency to conviviality, his love of com- 
pany, instantly led him to joining the lively set. It 
appears that, while he consumed his full share of wine 
and brandy, he "drank like a gentleman" and was 
never seen under the influence, but according to T. P. 
O'Connor, in his Parnell Movement, there were un- 
pleasant stories of wild bacchanalian nights, of fights 
with cab drivers over cab bills, of early morning visits 
to the police courts. 

William O'Brien, in his Recollections (page 133), 
gives a sordid picture of the Butt of those days stand- 
ing with his back to one of the statues in the Dublin 
Court, surrounded by a group of admiring lawyers, 
with a greasy looking discounter hovering on the out- 
skirts of the crowd. The brilliant orator would con- 
tinue his story undisturbed by the somber outsider, 
and then he would be seen gliding away, slipping his 
arm under that of his "creepy creditor," and walking 
off with him on apparent terms of intimacy and equal- 
ity. We have it on the authority of O'Connor that 
he was actually at one time in a debtor's prison. 
Strange, lovable, vagabondish genius, he might have 
found more and better company in the old days when 
Charles James Fox gambled all night at Brooks, when 
the younger Pitt drank inordinately of port until he 
could see "two speakers," and when Sheridan divided 
honors with Fox in the deception of importunate cred- 
itors, but the days when public men could play fast 



3S2 THE IRISH ORATORS 

and loose with morals without greatly impairing their 
public usefulness were gone. That which people 
laughed at in Fox and Sheridan they frowned upon 
in Butt. Perhaps William O'Brien has said the kind- 
est thing that can be said of this feature of Butt's 
character : 

"The errors of his young days will always be gently 
judged in Ireland, for they were largely due to that fond- 
ness for good-fellowship and improvident generosity 
which cause the countrymen of Goldsmith to take a 
greater pride in the poet's pension to the landlady of his 
garret in Green Arbor Court in his ragged and starving 
days than in his monument in Westminster Abbey." 

Of his career in parliament between 1852 and 1865 
little need be said. He was a consistent follower of 
the conservatives, and during the last great fight of 
1 the protectionists in the days of the corn law agita- 
tion his eloquence and familiarity with political econ- 
omy were considered valuable assets in the losing 
struggle. His defeat in 1865 was looked upon as a 
happy event by his real friends who understood some- 
thing of his improvidence and financial difficulties. It 
was their hope that he would retire from public life 
to devote himself to the practise of the profession his 
genius adorned. It is a striking comment upon his 
professional standing that upon his return to Dublin 
he was instantly overwhelmed with briefs. The prom- 
ise of opulence lay before him. He immediately took 
rank as the foremost lawyer and forensic orator in 
Ireland. Had he been content to confine himself 
henceforth to the courts he would doubtless have 
taken rank with Curran as one of the most dazzling 
geniuses of the Irish bar. Indeed a condition similar 



ISAAC BUTT 383 

to that in which Curran established his position among 
patriotic Irishmen by his defense of patriots in the 
courts was already developing. We shall now notice 
one chapter in the life of Butt which reflects infinite 
glory upon his career, and entitles him, despite his 
temperamental weaknesses, and his political failure, 
to the lasting love and gratitude of the Irish race. 

Ill 

There has never been an hour since the volunteers 
of the eighteenth century compelled the English to 
concede the legislative independence of the Irish peo- 
ple when there has not been a large element devoted 
to the idea that Irish rights can only be had at the 
point of the bayonet. We have seen, in the sketch of 
Flood, that he looked upon the disbandment of the 
Volunteers as a national calamity. A little later the 
more militant remnant of the Volunteers became the 
nucleus of the United Irishmen who met their fate in 
the unhappy uprising of 1798. A little later came the 
"Young Ireland" enthusiasts with revolutionary pur- 
poses, and after them the Fenians, who more nearly 
resembled in their organization and purposes the 
United Irishmen than any other militant organization 
the country has known. 

The Fenian Brotherhood had its inspiration among 
the exiled Irishmen of the United States, where it was 
organized toward the close of 1861. It contemplated 
the overthrow of English authority in Ireland by force 
of arms and the establishment of an Irish republic. It 
had its branch organizations in every state in the 
union, and very soon a numerous and powerful organ- 



384 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ization was perfected in Ireland. There the idea was 
presented at a time when the soil was peculiarly fecund 
for the proposition of force. The constitutional move- 
ment for repeal was dead. The English attitude to- 
ward Irish rights was extremely offensive. Never, 
perhaps, in two centuries had the the Irish cause been 
enveloped in such gloom. The only hope was force. 
And this hope was brightened by the conditions in the 
United States, which was then engaged in a Civil War 
in which thousands of Irishmen were distinguishing 
themselves by their dash and valor. At the head of 
the fighting Irish Brigade rode General Thomas Fran- 
cis Meagher — one of the leaders of '48. The failure of 
previous uprisings had been due in large measure to the 
lack of proper military preparation. And now the 
men of Ireland were preparing in the training schools 
of Gettysburg and the Wilderness. 

Thus it was that the Fenian idea took root in Ire- 
land and spread with remarkable celerity and with 
comparative secrecy. The Fenians were a fighting 
brood. Night after night, in secluded glens, the mem- 
bers of the brotherhood were drilled in military tac- 
tics. One of the songs of the period is expressive of 
the spirit of the times : 

"Enough of the Voice and the Pen, boys. 
Let us try the Rifle — and then, boys, 

We'll die every man, or 

We'll plant the green banner 
Victorious o'er mountain and glen, boys." 

As has always been the case with the revolutionists 
of Ireland, the leaders of the Fenians were men of 
character and ability. When the American National- 
ists sent an emissary over to Ireland and placed upon 



ISAAC BUTT 385 

James Stephens, a strong-willed, arrogant and dog- 
matic man, the burden of organizing the country for 
the revolution, that remarkable personage called to his 
aid Thomas Clarke Luby and John O'Leary. Both 
were men of exceptional capacity. An appreciation on 
their part of the importance of a newspaper as a me- 
dium of communication and agitation led to the estab- 
lishment of The Irish People in 1863, and the militant 
journal continued in existence, boldly challenging the 
right of England to rule in Ireland, until the raid upon 
it and its suppression in the autumn of 1865. 

The editorial policy of The Irish People was domi- 
nated by three masterful men, Luby, O'Leary and 
Charles Joseph Kickman. The first of these was 
an able and courageous man of a genial and lovable 
disposition. John O'Leary was a remarkable person- 
age, possessed of marked literary ability, and it is to 
him that we owe the fascinating Recollections of 
Fenians and Fenianism, written in the latter days of 
his eventful life. According to O'Leary the genius of 
the editorial staff was Charles Joseph Kickman, who 
wrote brilliantly. In the business office of this organ 
of Fenianism was that irrepressible and irreconcilable 
enemy of England whose notable career recently 
closed amid shadows in this country, O' Donovan 
Rossa. Among the correspondents of the journal was 
that other venerable Nemesis of English rule, John 
Devoy, whose status in Irish history was fixed in the 
sponsorship of the new departure, and in the organiza- 
tion, along with Davitt and Parnell, of the Land 
League, and whose virile pen is still active in the edi- 
torial columns of The Gaelic American. Another con- 
tributor whose name was to become a potential one in 



386 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Irish history was Fanny Parnell, as it was through her 
connection with The Irish People that the attention of 
her brother, Charles Stewart Parnell, was first turned 
toward the wrongs of his race. 

After the raid on the office of the official organ of 
Fenianism had given evidence of a conspiracy and 
Stephens, Luby, O'Leary, Haltigan,* Rossa and others 
were arrested on the charge of treason- felony, the 
Fenians instinctively turned to Isaac Butt to repre- 
sent them in the courts. This was due to his com- 
manding position at the bar and his persuasive elo- 
quence and not because he had manifested the slightest 
sympathy with the principles of Fenianism. On the 
contrary it was generally understood that he was un- 
alterably opposed to any movement outside the con- 
stitutional groove. The acceptance of the call from 
the Fenians, however, was destined to have a very re- 
markable effect on Irish history. It was to convert the 
old-time loyalist and conservative into the leader of 
another national movement looking toward the resto- 
ration of the Irish parliament and the solution of the 
land problem. 

The trials of the Fenians were travesties Ion- jus- 
tice. Almost a century had intervened since Curran 
had defended the United Irishmen in courts presided 
over by men who disgraced the ermine, where juries 
were openly packed, and military display was resorted 
to in efforts to intimidate, but the intervening century 
had brought no change in the time-honored methods of 



* John Haltigan was the printer of The Irish People. His son, 
James Haltigan, is the author of The Irish in the American Revo- 
lution, and another son, Patrick J. Haltigan, for many years the 
editor of the National Hibernian, is now the reading clerk of the 
house of representatives. 



ISAAC BUTT 387 

conducting Irish state trials. The same outrages were 
perpetrated in the name of justice. 

From the moment he accepted the defense of the 
Fenian prisoners, Butt threw himself, heart and soul, 
into the task before him. His intimate association 
with his clients was a revelation to him. It gave him a 
new light on Ireland. As the cases progressed, he re- 
tired more and more from his general practise, and 
soon abandoned altogether all business not directly 
connected with the Fenian trials. His work in the 
courts commanded universal attention and respect. 
Confronted by packed juries, by prejudiced judges, by 
a poisoned public opinion, he fought every inch of the 
ground with a stubborn tenacity and resourcefulness 
that had never been surpassed. His eloquence was 
masterful and inspiring — but it was all in vain. The 
trials were a farce. Man after man was convicted, and 
prisoner after prisoner, in speeches from the dock, 
stirred Ireland from the Irish sea to the Bay of Bantry. 

Three days before the trials were to begin James 
Stephens made his escape from prison under mysteri- 
ous circumstances,* and Luby was consequently the 

* O'Donovan Rossa in Irish Rebels, the story of his prison life, 
in commenting on the mysterious disappearance of Stephens 
says: "Next morning he (John Devoy, present editor of The 
Gcelic American) was brought back and we renewed our ac- 
quaintance. Our conversation was all about Ireland and 'the 
movement/ He was one of the men that took James Stephens 
out of prison ; and it was into his arms he was received when he 
slipped off the prison wall, and I got a full history of the affair 
from him. It is strange to find it industriously circulated in 
America that James Stephens was taken out of prison with the 
connivance of the English government. . . . James Stephens 
was taken out of prison by men who were true to Ireland ; and, 
whatever can be said of him in other respects, this, at least, may 
be said of him, that he is as free from the taint of English gold, 
and as unlikely to be corrupted by it, as any man who has ever 
spoken of his name." 



388 THE IRISH ORATORS 

first to be placed on trial on the charge of treason- 
felony. The court room had long been made historic by- 
similar scenes. In the same room Curran had pleaded 
pitifully for justice for the men of '98. From the dock 
of the same room Emmet had made his appeal "to 
time and to eternity and not to men." The same 
methods of intimidations were resorted to, and in the 
beginning of his speech in defense of Luby we find 
Butt, following in the wake of Curran, protesting 
against the military display. 

"Everything," he said, ^tends to make us all believe 
that there is something extraordinary and peculiar in this 
trial. A great Roman advocate whose name has become 
a model for advocacy in all countries and all ages once 
asked, when defending a man in the Forum, 'What means 
this clash and clang of armed men around me ?' Gentle- 
men, I ask, why is it that in your streets the military 
are surrounding this tribunal, and the avenues through 
which the populace were admitted in every former time 
to witness the trials in this place — why are they now 
closed by the police? Why is the audience that listens 
to this trial, why is the public — that great tribunal before 
which we all discharge our respective duties — composed 
in its largest proportions of the constabulary?" 

So much for the physical conditions surrounding 
the trials. 

In his defense of the prisoners Butt approached his 
task with the positive knowledge that his clients had 
been engaged in a conspiracy. He was confronted, of 
course, by the inevitable informers. Handicapped as 
he was he took advantage of every technical and con- 
stitutional right, only to have them brushed aside by 
the court. His analysis of the evidence was masterly. 



ISAAC BUTT 389 

His dissection of the characters and reliability of the 
informers disclosed them as utterly unworthy of cre- 
dence. Under ordinary conditions, in ordinary trials, 
no jury could have been found to convict the accused. 
But the advocate soon discovered that constitutional 
guarantees availed nothing. The well established rule 
proclaimed by Erskine, and agreed to by an English 
jury, in the case of Hardy was denied him. The 
charges of judges were bitter harangues for the prose- 
cution. Such flagrant violations of the established 
rules of justice aroused Butt's indignation, and his 
protests became more and more vehement. It was here 
that his drift away from the ultra-conservatism of his 
youth began, and even in the Luby trial, in denying 
the treasonable character of an article in The Irish 
People, which had repudiated the proposition that lib- 
erty "is not worth a drop of human blood," he boldly 
exclaimed : 

"Gracious Heavens, is not a person to say that in a 
free country ? And do I understand the attorney-general 
to say that he read with horror the doctrine that no po- 
litical advantage is worth a drop of blood ? I hold and 
avow that doctrine. And the attorney-general who at- 
tacks it is the attorney-general of the ministry who ap- 
proved of the actions of Garibaldi in Italy, and the at- 
torney-general of the sovereign who owns the throne of 
this realm, with the proud consciousness that Englishmen 
did think a political advantage worth a great deal of 
blood to obtain it; and Russell shed his blood on the 
scaffold for it ; and the men of Derry were the men who 
shed their blood to obtain the political advantages by 
which the sovereign obtained the crown. 

"I repudiate the doctrine which would tell us to think 
little of the men who sacrificed their lives to give free- 
dom to the Poles. Which of us would visit Switzerland 



390 THE IRISH ORATORS 

and fail to make a pious pilgrimage to the chapel of Will- 
iam Tell? The nation that holds a contrary opinion 
would be a nation of helots. If the attorney-general had 
said this in the days of Queen Anne, he would have ap- 
proved the acts of Doctor Sacheverell. He preached a 
sermon in which he said no one should resist the su- 
preme power of the king, and he was impeached, and 
the house of lords found him guilty, and he lost his 
church preferments — and his book was burned by the 
common hangman. 

"Therefore, gentlemen, do not misunderstand this : 
The doctrine of the revolution has asserted that when 
the sovereign fails in his duty to the people, the people 
have a right to resist; and to enable them to enforce 
that right, the heads of the revolution enacted that every 
Englishman had a right to pure freedom. These max- 
ims are not known in this country. The British consti- 
tution has not its place in this unhappy land. The gov- 
ernment of this country is so carried on that it is 
necessary for the government to disarm its people; and 
I must tell you that if every statement of this kind is to 
be spoken of as high treason in Ireland, the country is 
not governed in the spirit of the British law. Dismiss 
that from your mind, as Luby does, that doctrine that 
a political advantage is not worth a drop of human blood. 
It is not the doctrine of the British constitution, it is not 
the doctrine of the British law, and it is not the doctrine 
that God has imprinted in the minds of men." 

With the exception of a few such outbursts of patri- 
otic indignation, Butt confined himself during the first 
of the Fenian trials to insisting on every constitutional 
right for his client and to exposing the failure of the 
evidence to fix the crime of treason- felony upon the 
defendants. All was in vain. Luby, O'Leary, Halti- 
gan, Moore, Rossa — all passed from the dock to penal 
servitude. But when, a little later, following the up- 
rising, the courts were packed with Fenians charged 



ISAAC BUTT 39i 

with high treason and with their lives at stake, Butt 
threw aside restraint and challenged the injustice of 
the courts with a boldness suggestive of Curran. 
Henceforth we find him fighting desperately and per- 
sistently for every constitutional right of defense, en- 
gaging in occasional sharp altercations with the judges, 
and speaking with an audacity quite foreign to his 
former methods. His cross-examination of the in- 
formers was grilling and prolonged. He no longer 
confined himself to technical defenses, but, as in his 
defense of Burke, did not hestitate passionately to de- 
fend the character of the Fenians when assailed. His- 
toric justice demands that this defense, made in the 
presence of authority, and in the face of the attorney- 
general be preserved : 

"After all we have heard charged upon those engaged 
in the Fenian organization," he said, "after all the hide- 
ous stories that were accepted by the cowardly credulity 
of fear, an outbreak did occur. In many places the gen- 
try were at the mercy of these cruelly slandered Fenians, 
and we can say with pride for our countrymen that not 
one single crime of cruelty or outrage disgraced their 
movement. You have heard this proved abundantly in 
the evidence of this case. Even the police who fell into 
their hands were treated with kindness. They spared 
them and let them go, when they knew that in doing so 
they were leaving the witnesses whose testimony might 
bring them to the scaffold. For hours together these 
witnesses were in their power. They voluntarily let them 
go unharmed when they might forever have silenced the 
voice of the accuser; and if any one ever suffers for 
being of the party at Stepaside and Glencullen, he must 
be convicted on the testimony of witnesses who, as they 
appear one after another against him, are living and 
breathing witnesses of the mercy and humanity of the 



392 THE IRISH ORATORS 

insurgents. Had they been actuated by bloodthirstiness 
or cruelty these witnesses would never have been here 
to tell the tale." 

In his defense of John M'Cafferty, an American 
citizen, Butt made an especially brilliant fight, placing 
the court on record as refusing the prisoner's rights 
guaranteed by the spirit of the British law. 

As the injustice of the trials grew more flagrant, 
Butt became more and more audacious in his denuncia- 
tion of the government until in the trial of Flood, 
Duffy and Cody he reached a climax in a bitter denun- 
ciation of the court. In this case the unfairness of the 
proceeding was peculiarly irritating and infamous. 
The three men, tried together, were charged with sep- 
arate offenses, and Cody was charged with being a 
party to a conspiracy to assassinate the presiding 
judges and the members of a jury in a previous trial, 
four of whom sat on his own case.. That this was 
done with the deliberate intent to blacken the prospects 
for the acquittal of Flood and Duffy was all too evi- 
dent. The impassioned protests of Butt were un- 
heeded. In the course of his argument to the jury the 
intrepid advocate created something of a sensation by 
the audacity of his. attack upon the proceeding when 
he said : 

"I ask you, then, was there ever in the annals of a 
British tribunal — in the history of the regular tribunals 
of any country upon earth — such a spectacle as is now 
presented in this court in the drama now going on, into 
which you and the judges have been reluctantly dragged 
as actors? The piisoner, Cody, is on trial for conspir- 
acy to shoot three judges. These three judges are sitting 
in judgment upon him on that charge. He is on trial 



ISAAC BUTT ; 393 

for conspiracy to shoot twelve other persons who are 
named — to shoot them because, attending here on the 
panel, they have given a verdict in another case. Four 
of these persons are sitting as jurors to try whether he 
is guilty of that charge. The statement of these facts 
is sufficient to brand this trial as an outrage upon every 
principle of justice." 

And in the course of the same speech Butt did not 
hesitate to accuse the government with manufacturing 
a false charge of conspiracy to assassinate for the 
purpose of preventing the queen from extending mercy 
to men already convicted and sentenced to die the 
frightful death of the scaffold. Owing to the attempt 
that has been made to blacken the character of the 
Fenians who have played such an important part in 
the Irish movement, everything urged in their behalf 
in the presence of the representatives of the govern- 
ment is important in establishing their historic status. 
On the assassination charge Butt said : 

"I ask you as Irish gentlemen, as men of Irish truth 
and Irish justice, entirely to discredit this damnable fab- 
rication of the assassination plot. I am anxious for the 
prisoners. I am anxious for those, not now on their 
trial, against whom, when they were on their trial, no 
such evidence was produced, no such charge was made. 
I am anxious for the honor of our country. Wild and, 
if you will, wicked men may have used language that 
implied that they were ready to administer the wild jus- 
tice of revenge. Wild and desperate men may have done 
desperate things to avenge themselves on individual in- 
formers. These are the incidents of every conflict in 
which strong passions are engaged. But on behalf of 
those who have been guiding the Fenian organization; 
on behalf of those who are now wearing out their lives 
in the miseries of a convict prison; on behalf of those 



394 THE IRISH ORATORS 

who are awaiting the execution of the doom that has 
sentenced them to die; on behalf of all Irishmen who 
have joined in this wild effort for their native land, 
whether they lie in the prison cell or are still free on 
their native hills, or exiles in far-off lands, I indignantly 
deny that ever any design of assassination entered into 
their plans. It is a cruel slander upon men whose whole 
life and conduct, whatever were their political follies or 
their political crimes, prove them incapable of this. 

"Do not wonder at my earnestness. Even in the pres- 
ence of those to whom my first duty is now due, I can 
not forget that in this evidence a blow is struck at those 
who are not here. The life of a noble-hearted man may 
be at this moment trembling in the balance. We know — 
I state nothing that has not been the subject of public 
discussion — we know the mercy that has touched the 
royal breast ; we know how considerations of state policy 
have been urged against it ; how against those considera- 
tions the instincts of woman's heart have pleaded in a 
queenly bosom. We know the efforts in which the voice 
of humanity has spoken to the throne the desires of loyal 
men that the life of the true-hearted might be spared. 
And now, when that life is trembling in the balance, the 
fabrication of that vile traitor is brought forward here 
to turn the scale. And those who cry for blood believe 
that if the fabrication which represents assassination as 
a portion of the Fenian plan can gain one moment's 
credence, evil passions would be stirred, in whose pres- 
ence mercy and justice might plead in vain. And know- 
ing all this, feeling all this, thinking that he could do 
service if he could give reason for taking away of human 
life, that wretched man has crept from his loathsome 
lair, a lair more loathsome than the stew from which he 
came a second time to swear away the life of Burke, 
and by this new fabrication earn another claim upon the 
gratitude of those who are thirsting for blood." 

It was also in the course of his defense of Flood 
that Butt made the bitter charge that the British em- 



ISAAC BUTT 395 

pi re apparently had one law for England and another 
one for Ireland. The charge upon which Flood 
was tried was that he had entered into a conspiracy for 
the seizure of Chester Castle in England — but he was 
being tried in Dublin. In several of his speeches dur- 
ing the Fenian trials he had harped upon the ruling of 
the English courts in the Hardy case that no man 
could be convicted of high treason on the testimony of 
one witness — a ruling utterly ignored in the Fenian 
trials. Time and again he had quoted Lord Russell to 
the effect that Irish juries were more pliable to the 
purposes of the government than English juries. And 
in the Flood case he picked upon the same chord in 
commenting upon the fact that not one prosecution 
had been initiated in England in connection with the 
affair at Chester. 

"And, gentlemen," he said, "when we come to consider 
this marvelous story of the project for the seizure of 
Chester Castle, it is impossible not to be struck by the 
singular fact that not one single human being has been 
prosecuted in England for a participation in that treason- 
able design. In the center of one of the most peaceful 
and prosperous districts of peaceful and loyal England, 
hundreds of persons assembled in that quaint old city 
of Chester to raise the standard of open rebellion, to 
make war upon the queen's troops, to seize upon one of 
the strongholds of the nation in the open day. They 
came in troops from every quarter ; they filled the streets 
of the town; and disappeared as mysteriously as they 
came. And of all the crowd that met them in the broad 
daylight — if you are to believe the story — in an act of 
open and audacious rebellion, not one has been prose- 
cuted or brought to account. Not an effort appears to 
have been made to find out even who they were. No 
reward is offered for the apprehension of any of them. 



396 THE IRISH ORATORS 

They left their homes, wherever they live, quietly in the 
morning. They went back to them as quietly in the 
evening. No one can tell us who they were, whence 
they came or whither they went. The tranquillity of the 
old city was not disturbed for one single hour. No mag- 
isterial investigation has ever been instituted. No police 
inquiry was held. A rebellion passed off as a matter of 
course — and at this hour no single individual has been 
made amenable to justice for being in Chester with that 
party of traitors on that day. 

"Two persons have been put upon their trials for par- 
ticipation in that treasonable raid — and their trials take 
place in Dublin. If the case be true, why was not Flood 
tried in Chester? There is but one reason that can be 
assigned. They dare not submit to an English jury the 
evidence on which they ask you to convict. Lord Rus- 
sell has said, and truly said, that 'while in all state trials 
English juries lean to the side of liberty, Irish juries lean 
to the side of arbitrary power and the crown/ Were 
they afraid of an English jury? Why was not this man 
tried in Chester? Are you empaneled on that jury to 
verify the reproach of Lord Russell, arid give one more 
proof that when men are accused by power, Irish juries 
can always be found ready to convict them on evidence 
on which English juries would refuse to act ?" 

But such appeals were futile. The real secret of the 
pliability of Irish juries in state trials has always been 
that power has selected the juries in such cases with 
the view to conviction regardless of evidence, and such 
was the case in the Fenian trials. The accused Fenians 
one after another were passed through a form of trial 
and promptly convicted. Many were sentenced to 
penal servitude for many years. Some, accused of 
high treason, were sentenced to die upon the scaffold, 
to be hung by the neck until dead, to "have their heads 
severed from their bodies, and their bodies cut into 



ISAAC BUTT 397 

four parts." It was the old familiar formula for Irish 
patriots. Through the interference of the queen those 
sentenced to die were spared for penal servitude. The 
Fenian movement was apparently destroyed. There 
came, a little later on, another episode at Manchester 
resulting in the making of a few more martyrs, Allen, 
Larkin and O'Brien, whose memories are held in rev- 
erance by Irishmen throughout the world. But Fenian- 
ism was history. 

The shameless travesty of the Fenian trials, and the 
nobility of the character of the Fenian prisoners, 
awakened Isaac Butt to a new career — a career fore- 
shadowed in the following lines from his peroration in 
defense of Flood : 

"Deeper far than Fenianism, deeper than any external 
manifestation, lies the disaffection of the people to the 
whole system by which they are ruled. Rebellion may 
be put down by force. Flying columns may rout and 
scatter the bands of undisciplined revolt. But still the 
disaffection lurks in the secret hearts of the people. By 
the peasant's fireside, round the hearth of the cottage, 
hatred — I grieve in my soul to use the word, but it is a 
true one — hatred of the whole system of Irish govern- 
ment rankles in every breast." 

And thus from the Dublin court room in which Em- 
met made his immortal appeal, in which Curran had 
poured forth his splendid eloquence, Isaac Butt went 
forth to dedicate his genius henceforth to the undi- 
vided service of his country. 

IV 

The government, however, was not satisfied with a 
mere conviction. Some of these unhappy prisoners 



398 THE IRISH ORATORS 

were almost goaded into insanity. Prodded to fury by 
one of the wardens, O'Donovan Rossa was betrayed 
into making an attack upon the miserable persecutor 
and for thirty-five days he paid the penalty of assert- 
ing his manhood by having his hands handcuffed be- 
hind his back. 

However, the government was not alone in its de- 
termination to follow the Fenians into the prisons, for 
Isaac Butt had become so ardently attached to the 
cause of his clients that he determined to make their 
cause a national cause. With this in view he organ- 
ized and became president of the Amnesty Association, 
perfected for the purpose of obtaining their release. 
He determined that Ireland should make their cause 
her own, and that England and the world should know 
something of the ineffable brutality to which they w r ere 
being subjected. 

His first step was to petition Gladstone. He might 
as well have petitioned Mars. Only a little while be- 
fore Gladstone had given expression to a bitter and 
eloquent protest against the treatment of some Italian 
prisoners incarcerated in an Italian prison — but these 
were Irishmen, British subjects, incarcerated in a Brit- 
ish prison. He turned a deaf ear. Then Butt deter- 
mined that Gladstone should hear. He made his appeal 
direct to Ireland. A series of monster meetings was 
held all over the island and the people poured forth 
as they had not done since the days of O'Connell. The 
masterful eloquence of Butt had aroused them as they 
had not been stirred since the god-like Dan had thun- 
dered from the repeal platform. The records show that 
during the year 1869 more than a million men appeared 
at the Amnesty meetings to register a passionate pro- 



ISAAC BUTT 399 

test with the government. In August the Amnesty 
orators addressed seventeen thousand at Limerick, ten 
thousand at Waterford, thirty thousand at Drogheda ; 
in September they spoke to twenty thousand at Bray, 
thirty thousand at Kilkenny and Kilfmane, thirty thou- 
sand at Dundalk, twenty thousand at Longford, fifty 
thousand at Castlebar, seventy thousand at Inchicore, 
forty thousand at Cork, and thirty thousand at Clo- 
nard; and in October they appeared before forty thou- 
sand at Templemore, twenty thousand at Ennis, twenty 
thousand at Roscommon, fifty thousand at Ennis- 
corthy, twenty thousand at Navan, fifty thousand at 
Tipperary, and Butt capped the climax in a startling 
meeting in the fields of Cabra, Dublin, where he 
swayed more than two hundred thousand men with an 
eloquence that appealed to those who heard it as in- 
spired. 

The meeting in the fields of Cabra smacked of revo- 
lution. Butt had given a sufficient manifestation of 
the fact that the Irish people were not unmindful that 
the Fenian prisoners were persecuted because of their 
loyalty to Ireland. He now felt that the time was ripe 
for a cessation of these gatherings, and immediately 
after the Cabra meeting, he offered a resolution before 
the Amnesty Association to the effect that no more 
meetings should be held for the time being in view of 
the overwhelming evidence that had been given the 
government of the popular sentiment in Ireland. 

But Butt was not to rest his case with the Cabra 
meeting. Once more he turned to Gladstone in a let- 
ter of great length and tremendous force, reviewing 
the case in detail, and linking the treatment of the 
Fenian prisoners with the whole of Ireland. It is in 



400 THE IRISH ORATORS 

this masterful letter that we have our first introduction 
to the new Butt — conservative no longer, English sym- 
pathizer no longer, but now an aggressive Irish patriot, 
in complete accord with Irish sentiment. The follow- 
ing passage is not only an eloquent defense of the pris- 
oners, but throws a light of historic value upon the 
character of the Fenians : 

"Much of that change, I have said, was due to the per- 
sonal demeanor of the men. Let me dwell for a moment 
on a matter that, in truth, vitally affects the question of 
their right to a pardon — I mean the personal character of 
the prisoners, and the motives and objects with which 
they entered on the enterprise in which they were en- 
gaged. Whatever obloquy gathered round them at first, 
there are few men who now deny to the leaders of the 
Fenian conspiracy the merit of perfect sincerity, of a 
deep and honest conviction of the righteousness of their 
cause, and of an unselfish and disinterested devotion to 
that cause. I was placed toward most of them in a re- 
lation which gave me an opportunity of observing them 
in circumstances which try men's souls. Both I and those 
who were associated with me in that relation have often 
been struck by their high-minded truthfulness, that 
shrunk with sensitiveness from subterfuges which few 
men in their position would have thought wrong. No 
mean or selfish instructions ever reached us. Many, very 
many messages were conveyed to us which were marked 
by a punctilious and an almost overstrained anxiety 
to avoid even a semblance of departure from the strict- 
est line of honor. There was not one of them who would 
have purchased his safety by a falsehood, by a concession 
that would have brought dishonor to his cause, or by a 
disclosure that would have compromised the safety of a 
companion. It seems like an exaggeration to say this; 
but this is a matter on which I can write as a witness, 
and therefore am bound by the responsibility of one. 

"I know that my testimony would be confirmed by all 




Courtesy Mrs. Rossa 

• O'Donovan Rossa 

Taken just before his last illness 



ISAAC BUTT 401 

who had the same means of observing them as myself. 
The conviction was forced upon us all that, whatever 
the men were, they were no vulgar revolutionists, dis- 
turbing their country for any base or selfish purpose; 
they were enthusiasts of great hearts and lofty minds; 
and, with the bold and unwavering courage with which, 
one and all, they met the doom which the law pronounced 
against their crime, there was a startling proof that their 
cause and their principles had power to inspire in them 
the faith and the endurance which elevated suffering into 
martyrdom. 

"These, I confess, are the memories that have haunted 
me, and which have stirred my heart, when I thought 
that men like these were sent to herd with the vilest 
and the meanest criminals, and subjected to indignities 
which we can scarcely bear to see inflicted on the most 
vile. If I am right in the description I have given of 
them, there is a moral unfitness in the degradation they 
are enduring. I know well that law must vindicate its 
power — I know well that no government can treat re- 
bellion as a venal offense. But there are instincts in our 
nature which teach us, above all the selfish sophistries that 
appeal to our cowardice and our passions, that to in- 
flict the lifelong punishment of the convict prison upon 
high-minded and truthful and self-sacrificing enthusiasts 
is morally wrong. It is from this that I take my start. 
The administration of criminal justice which places such 
men on a level with the offscourings of mankind offends 
against feelings which can not be violated without crime. 

". . . Our queen has these men in her power. The 
law has given her the absolute right to punish them as 
they are punished. But the law has also entrusted her 
with the noble prerogative of pardon ; and her oath, em- 
bodying a duty which God has cast on her when he placed 
the scepter in her hands, binds her to administer justice 
with mercy. You are her chief adviser in the discharge 
of obligations from which neither you nor she can es- 
cape. I ask you solemnly — I ask you by the highest ob- 
ligation that can bind you to take up and study the case 



402 THE IRISH ORATORS 

of any one of the prisoners you are detaining. Be satis- 
fied — as I know you will and must be satisfied — that, 
no matter how much you may condemn him, he acted 
under a sincere and honest conviction of duty to his 
country in an honest and elevated effort to redress his 
country's wrongs; that no selfish scheme of aggrandize- 
ment darkened the purity of his motives; that no de- 
sire of bloodshed or violence mingled w T ith his hopes for 
his country's deliverance. Read over, then, the accounts 
of the miseries and the degradations which he endures; 
and when next you enter the closet of your sovereign, 
and advise her as your conscience tells you as to the duty 
which she owes to that convict over whom God has given 
her power — will you, can you say that it is to leave him 
in that misery and that degradation ? I am descending to 
somewhat lower grounds when I remind you of that to 
which I have already referred — the absence of all out- 
rage or violence which marked the outbreak of March, 
1867. It can not be said that there was not opportunity. 
I was present at more than one trial at which it was 
undeniably proved that the homes of loyal, actively loyal 
gentlemen, were in absolute control of armed parties of 
insurgents. The ladies of the family, in some instances 
unprotected and alone, had not to complain of one rude 
word addressed to one of them." 

Having shown in various ways that the whole IrisH 
nation was demanding amnesty for the Fenian pris- 
oners, he argued that a refusal on the part of the gov- 
ernment would be proof positive to the Irish people 
that they were not looked upon as the equals in rights 
of the English in the so-called co-partnership of the 
two nations : 

"Some years ago there was an unsuccessful revolt in 
England. There had been in that country prosecutions 
for high treason. Suppose the men convicted of that 
offense to be enduring penal servitude. Suppose the 



ISAAC BUTT 403 

whole English nation, with one consent, to ask for their 
liberation — all the municipalities of England to send their 
chief magistrates to the levee of her majesty, to place 
in her hands the petitions which these municipalities had 
desired them to present — the Lord Mayor of London to 
exercise his ancient prerogative of addressing the queen 
upon her throne, and to proceed from the audience of 
his sovereign to the bar of the house of commons, and 
there to present the petitions of the chief municipality 
in the kingdom. Suppose mighty mass meetings to as- 
semble myriads in every district and city and town. Sup- 
pose three hundred thousand men to meet peacefully and 
quietly on Hampstead Heath, or even to seize, in spite 
of the police, upon one of the royal parks. Suppose all 
this countenanced by a large portion of the magistracy 
of the country. And lastly suppose the demand for a 
pardon to be supported earnestly and solemnly by the 
clergy of the church of the English people. How many 
days — how many hours would elapse before the prison 
doors were thrown open ? How many days would power 
be retained by the minister — I might almost say by the 
sovereign — if they were not? 

"While the prisoners are detained in penal servitude 
against the will of the Irish people, that detention will 
be to Ireland a living badge of conquest — not the less 
galling because you will not trust them to any place of 
keeping on Irish soil. Every mark of national servitude 
attends the imprisonment of those whom the Irish people 
desire to let go. 

"I know that while they are kept in custody the dis- 
cussion will go on. It will assume a form and a character 
different from any that have hitherto belonged to it. 
There are bold and feeling hearts in Ireland that will 
never let this matter rest. I could tell you of a thousand 
forms in which the popular resentment may disturb and 
embitter all the relations of government and of political 
life. Like Banquo's ghost, it will present itself at every 
public feast. It will raise its angry form at every mist- 
ing where the supporter of the government appears. It 



404 THE IRISH ORATORS 

will meet our rulers in their walks and drives through 
our streets. The narrative of the sorrows of the prison- 
ers will be repeated, in prose and song, in the far-off 
lands in which the Irish race is scattered. It may be 
that throughout Europe, in the dismal tales of the se- 
verities of Dartmoor, the story of Silvio Pellico and 
Speilberg will be revived." 

There is reason to believe that the powerful appeal 
of Isaac Butt, for whom Gladstone entertained a high 
personal regard, made a deep impression upon the 
prime minister, but the government was adamant. 
Then, after the mass meetings, came more convincing 
and startling proof that Ireland was aroused. A va- 
cancy occurred in the parliamentary representation of 
Tipperary, and it was decided to put up O'Donovan 
Rossa, the splendid patriot who recently died in New 
York and was imposingly buried in Dublin, and who 
was still in penal servitude. A popular government 
candidate was put up against him — a man of fine quali- 
ties who had been one of the Fenians' legal battery in 
the trials. The people were not opposed to the lawyer 
— they w r ere for Rossa for a purpose. In those days 
it required money to conduct a campaign in Tipperary. 
There was no fund, but the people responded with 
such marked generosity that a fund of sufficient pro- 
portions was almost immediately raised. Rossa was 
easily elected — and the news carried to Gladstone.* 

*John Mitchell, commenting at the time on the election of 
Rossa, said : "A great event has befallen in Irish history. Tip- 
perary has just done a wiser and a bolder deed than her sister 
county of Clare achieved forty years ago. That Clare election 
won, to be sure, what was called Catholic Emancipation, for 
the Claremen elected the disqualified Catholic, O'Connell, to rep- 
resent them in parliament. Now the Tipperarymen have elected 
the disqualified felon, O'Donovan Rossa, in his convict cell — have 



ISAAC BUTT 405 

While the result was not immediate an impression had 
been made upon the government, and Butt persisted 
in his agitation until success finally crowned his efforts. 
But the Amnesty movement and the Fenian trials 
did something more than reawaken Ireland — it made 
a leader. It smoothed the way for the revival of the 
constitutional agitation for home rule. It altered the 
view of Isaac Butt. The effect upon him, as he has 
described it, was expressed in his speech to the Na- 
tional Conference of 1873 : 

"Mr. Gladstone said that Fenianism taught him the 
intensity of Irish disaffection. It taught me more and 
better things. It taught me the depth, the breadth, the 
sincerity of that love of fatherland that misgovernment 
had tortured into disaffection. And misgovernment, 
driving men to despair, had exaggerated into revolt. 
State trials were not new to me. Twenty years before 
I stood near Smith O'Brien when he braved the sentence 
of death which the law pronounced upon him. I saw 
Meagher meet the same and then I asked myself this, 
'Surely the state is out of joint, surely all our social 
system is unhinged when O'Brien and Meagher are con- 
demned by their country to a traitor's doom.' Twenty 
years have passed away, and once more I stood by men 
who had dared the desperate enterprise of freeing their 
country by revolt. They were men who were run down 
by obloquy — they had been branded as the enemies of 
religion and social order. I saw them manfully bear up 
against all. I saw the unflinching firmness to their cause 
by which they testified the sincerity of their faith in that 
cause — the deep conviction of its righteousness and truth 
■ — I saw them meet their fate with a manly fanaticism 

elected among all those imprisoned comrades the very one whom 
England most specially abhors — because he defied and denounced 
the most loudly her government, her traitor judges and her 
packed juries — elected him as the most fit and proper person to 
represent them." 



406 THE IRISH ORATORS 

that made them martyrs. I heard their words of devo- 
tion to their country, as with firm step and unyielding 
heart they left the dock and went down the dark passage 
that led them to the place where all hope closed upon 
them. And I asked myself again, 'Is there no way to 
arrest this? Are our best and bravest spirits to be car- 
ried away under this system of constantly resisted op- 
pression and constantly defeated revolt ?' " 

Thus the Fenians converted Isaac Butt, the quiet 
conservative, into one of the most valuable of Irish 
patriots. Henceforth we shall find him giving up all, 
profession, opulence and ease, to devote the remaining 
years of his life to the cause of his oppressed country, 
fighting fearlessly and constantly, albeit perhaps not 
successfully, but until he had presented the cause of 
Ireland to the imperial parliament so effectively that 
for the first time in many years, the rights of Ireland 
were once more the topic of the London clubs, draw- 
ing-rooms, and English country houses. His amnesty 
movement had awakened Ireland. We shall now see 
him shaking John Bull out of his complacent sleep. 

V 

The excitement incidental to the amnesty move- 
ment soon swept Butt away from his professional 
moorings and into the maelstrom of parliamentary life 
again. It was quite a different man, however, who re- 
entered Westminster from the unambitious soul who 
had left it in 1865. With Butt the ordinary conditions 
of life were reversed. Instead of being consumed in 
youth with an overweening ambition which gradually 
simmered down into a conservative old age, he gave 
evidence of no high aspirations in youth, and in old 



ISAAC BUTT 407 

age lie undertook the ambitious project of restoring the 
violated rights of his countrymen. The Fenian move- 
ment had satisfied him of two things — the determina- 
tion of his people never to acquiesce in their humilia- 
tion and subjection, and their inability successfully to 
cope in any revolutionary uprising with the trained 
and thoroughly equipped battalions of the British 
army. This realization turned his thoughts in the di- 
rection of another constitutional agitation looking to 
the restoration of the Irish parliament. No one, per- 
haps, but the valiant defender of the Fenian prisoners 
could have so much as interested the Irish people in 
another peaceful plan for the righting of their wrongs. 
The Fenians had every reason to love Isaac Butt and 
to concede something of their own convictions to him. 
The amnesty movement gave him an opportunity to 
blend the moderate and the radical elements into one 
common movement. The disestablishment of the 
church in Ireland had aroused the ire of that portion 
of the gentry which had hitherto declined to participate 
in any national movement, and they now took their 
revenge by insisting that the government might as well 
go on and disconnect the two countries. When the 
first meeting was held at which the Home-Rule move- 
ment was born there were numerous conservatives 
present participating actively and with apparent sin- 
cerity in the work of organization. Among the more 
prominent of these were the conservative lord mayor 
of Dublin, and Major Knox, the conservative propri- 
etor of The Irish Times. We shall find these conserv- 
atives dropping out as they found their resentment 
over the church disestablishment cooling, but the new 
national leader anticipated nothing of the kind. Thor- 



408 THE IRISH ORATORS 

oughly satisfied that the conservatives would stick, Butt 
made his appeal to the revolutionary or Fenian ele- 
ment. William O'Brien, in his Recollections, tells of 
a banquet in Hood's Hotel, in Great Brunswick Street, 
Dublin, which he attended in the interest of the Cork 
Herald, and which was addressed by Butt. The leader 
had been engaged throughout the day and the early 
part of the evening in defending in the courts a man 
who had fired upon a Gal way landlord, and after a 
splendid fight, had succeeded in freeing him. He ap- 
peared at the banquet flushed with his victory and in 
fine fettle. The majority of the men gathered about the 
board were Fenians and their friends, and to these Butt 
turned in a speech which is described as brilliantly 
eloquent with an earnest plea that they give him a 
chance to demonstrate what could be accomplished by a 
constitutional agitation. Now argumentative and now 
persuasive, pathetic and passionate, "fairly burning 
with the divine fire of eloquence," he declared that if 
the Fenians would support him in a constitutional 
movement until its utter futility had been proved, he 
would then give way to the revolutionary element and 
offer his own life to the service. It was a remarkable 
utterance, and throws a new light on Butt's political 
character. 

On learning that O'Brien had taken copious notes 
with the view to printing the speech in the Cork Her- 
ald, Butt importuned him to destroy the notes, and 
this was done. Some inklings of the nature of the 
speech, however, reached the house of commons, where 
attention was called to it, but, in the absence of any 
publication, the matter was dropped. It was through 
this attitude toward the Fenians, however, in connec- 



ISAAC BUTT 409 

tion with the conservative dissatisfaction over the 
church disestablishment, that made possible the organ- 
ization of the movement which Butt was to pass on to 
Parnell. The movement was organized at the Bilton 
Hotel, Dublin, May nineteenth, 1870, when Butt made 
the principal speech, and resolutions, declaratory of 
the purposes of the organization, were adopted to the 
effect that "it is the opinion of this meeting that the 
true remedy for the evils of Ireland is the establish- 
ment of an Irish parliament with full control over 
our domestic affairs." 

Little need be said of the activities of the new or- 
ganization previous to 1874 when Gladstone unex- 
pectedly dissolved parliament and thereby gave Butt 
his opportunity for gathering around him a nationalist 
party. There is something ineffably pathetic in the 
situation that confronted the Irish leader. He knew 
that the people of Ireland were with him, and was con- 
vinced that with a militant Home-Rule candidate in 
each constituency in Ireland he could sweep the coun- 
try. The difficulties in the way were of a financial 
nature. The movement was without sufficient funds. 
In those days elections were extremely expensive and 
there were but a few hundred pounds in the Home- 
Rule fund. The Irish- Americans had not been en- 
listed at this time in the work. Not only was the party 
without funds, but, at this time of all times, Butt's per- 
sonal creditors became embarrassingly importunate. 
There is something infinitely pathetic, not to say tragic, 
in the picture given us in O'Brien's Recollections of 
Butt's appearance at Limerick, where he was the Home- 
Rule candidate, only to find that a bankruptcy messen- 
ger had been despatched to Limerick from London to 



410 THE IRISH ORATORS 



arrest him for debt. A great crowd had assembled at 
the theater, the announcement was made that the 
Irish leader was "unavoidably absent," and Butt has- 
tened away to Killaloe, eighteen miles distant, to escape 
his pursuer. There is something immensely amusing 
in the situation which developed in that village where 
Butt hoped to escape notice. The word spread rapidly 
that the popular leader was in the village, and within a 
startlingly short time the band was out in the streets and 
a torch-light procession marched to the hotel to present 
him with an address. There poor Butt was compelled 
to sit, nervously twirling his glasses, listening to the 
reading of an interminable address, and fearing every 
moment the advent of the messenger from London. In- 
deed he just had time to stammer a few words of grat- 
itude and appreciation and to escape through the back 
yard of the hotel when the officer reached the scene 
only to find that the bird had flown. 

Under such disheartening circumstances Butt did 
the best he could. Wherever he could find a genuine 
Home Ruler who was able to defray his own election 
expenses he eagerly pounced upon him and dragged 
him into the arena. It was at this time that he found 
the opportunity to enlist in the service of the country 
several splendid men such as A. M. Sullivan, Richard 
Power, and the stern irrepressible Biggar, who was 
later to be such a thorn in his side. Along with these, 
however, he was compelled to accept the candidacies of 
many who were mere policy men, discredited Whigs, 
political opportunists, soldiers of fortune, old men who 
had been political failures, young men eager to sell 
themselves to England. Out of the one hundred three 
Irish members he succeeded in surrounding himself 



ISAAC BUTT 411 

with a Home-Rule party of sixty — but such a party ! 
William O'Brien has aptly characterized it as "an in- 
congruous and barbarous mosaic." And yet it was 
this party, incongruous as it was, which made it possi- 
ble for Parnell a few years later to build up a militant 
organization. 

And now a word as to Butt's idea of Home Rule. 
It was not precisely the same idea which was accepted 
later on by Charles Stewart Parnell. It is but fair to 
Butt to describe his conception as much as possible 
after the fashion of one of his followers. Among the 
brilliant characters who shared Butt's views to a large 
extent was the satirical, sarcastic and eloquent F. H. 
O'Donnell, who has recently given to the world his 
fascinating and rather startling History of the Irish 
Parliamentary Party. It is difficult for any American 
to read Mr. O'Donnell with patience. He makes no 
effort to conceal his profound contempt for Parnell. 
He evidently despises Americans of Irish extraction. 
The contribution of American money to the campaign 
coffers of the Home-Rule party he looks upon as de- 
grading to the Irish. Indeed one is compelled, while 
paying tribute to O'Donnell's genius, to conclude that 
he writes with the splenic fury of a disappointed poli- 
tician who feels that he was set aside by men of infe- 
rior mentality. However, he looked upon the Butt 
movement as a statesmanlike movement and upon 
Butt himself as a dignified high-thinking statesman. 

We can do no better perhaps in describing Butt's 
proposed federal system than to quote from O'Don- 
nell's work. 

"In precise English and with a wealth of illustration," 
he says (page 48), "Butt and his friends in the Home 



412 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Rule League maintained the necessity of national liber- 
ties for a common empire. In a federal arrangement 
which would recognize the full self-government of Ire- 
land in all Irish matters, according to the ancient Irish 
constitution of king, lords and commons — no Gladstonian 
single-chambers and sub-colonial assemblies for him — 
there lay, according to Mr. Butt, all the national guaran- 
ties required by Ireland; and in the maintenance of an 
imperial parliament for imperial and British affairs there 
lay all the imperial guaranties required by the united 
kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain. So far as im- 
perial affairs were concerned, Mr. Butt insisted upon the 
complete and undiminished participation of the Irish rep- 
resentation in the rights and duties of the common em- 
pire." 

Again of this plan Mr. O'Donnell says (page 49) : 

"No British statesman, neither Chamberlain nor Rose- 
berry nor another, can ever enunciate principles of em- 
pire which can substantially change for the better the 
scheme of national and imperial federation which Isaac 
Butt laid before the assembly of Ireland and Irish opin- 
ion forty years ago." 

The arguments advanced by Butt in advocacy of the 
federal idea were threefold : first, it was necessary to 
the end that Ireland should have a part in the vast 
colonial system of the empire which had been built up 
to a considerable degree by Irish valor and ingenuity; 
second, that without such a system the Irish people 
would be hopelessly separated from the millions of 
Irish living in England and the British colonies; and 
third, that without it it would be impossible for the 
Irish in the fatherland ever to be of service to the 
Irish in England. 



ISAAC BUTT 413 

On another point Butt was adamant where Parnell 
was willing to yield — he insisted upon two chambers 
in the restored Irish parliament, and that the Irish 
should retain a representation in the imperial parlia- 
ment. It is the contention of O'Donnell that this lat- 
ter phase was responsible for the support given the 
Home-Rule movement by the Irish in England. It 
will be noted by any student of Butt's life that he 
differed temperamentally from Parnell in that he was 
essentially conservative while Parnell was essentially 
a radical. It is quite certain that Butt would never 
have countenanced the land movement of Davitt. He 
drew in horror from anything that smacked of revo- 
lution. He had the old conservative idea of the sanc- 
tity of property. O'Donnell has probably given an 
accurate idea of Butt's mental processes in the follow- 
ing passage : 

"It was perfectly clear to us that we wanted to restore 
the Irish constitution ; that no single chamber could pos- 
sibly be a parliament of Grattan, nor could possibly be 
any guarantee to the interest of property and conserva- 
tism; that on the other hand the existence of the house 
of lords, possessed of all the rights of the English cham- 
ber, was the best possible security against spoliatory leg- 
islation. It might occasionally be a clog upon some real 
reforms. But better a conservative clog than a socialist 
menace and a Jacobin convention." 

The movement of Butt also differed from that of 
Parnell in that the former proposed to keep the Home- 
Rule party absolutely free and independent of any 
outside power or influence such as the Fenians, the 
Land League, and the American affiliation. Thus we 
find, that the very features of Butt's policy, which 



414 THE IRISH ORATORS 

O'Donnell praises as statesmanlike and superior to the 
Parnell plan, are the very features that have made it 
possible for the Home-Rule party in parliament to 
force concessions from the British parliament. 

Now let us turn to his parliamentary activity. We 
find Butt taking advantage of the earliest opportunity 
in the parliament of 1874 for bringing forward his 
Home-Rule propaganda in a speech which has never 
been surpassed probably in its brilliancy or exhaustive 
treatment of the subject from every possible point of 
view. This speech made a deep impression upon the 
house of commons, but it made a more abiding impres- 
sion upon the masses of the English people, and espe- 
cially upon the working classes of the industrial cen- 
ters of England. O'Donnell tells us that in traveling 
about over England a little later he was astonished to 
find the number of English artisans of the higher or- 
der who had preserved Butt's speech and had mastered 
and acquiesced in. its reasoning. 

It was the plan of Butt to crystallize the proposals 
of his party in a number of bills to be brought before 
the house and exhaustively discussed. It is recorded 
that the leader took upon himself to a large degree the 
preparation of these measures. Year after year he 
pursued this policy. At first the English were amazed 
at the effrontery of Butt in daring to demand any of 
the time of the British parliament for the discussion 
of Irish affairs, but, as they followed his methods, and 
found that he proposed a moderate, conventional dis- 
cussion, and that his manner of discussion was "gen- 
tlemanly" and in "good tone," they ultimately became 
reconciled to the Home-Rule program, and after lis- 
tening with comparative patience to the speeches, they 



ISAAC BUTT 415 

proceeded to vote down the Irish measures with good- 
natured unanimity. The English parties were agreed 
upon one proposition — that Home Rule was a pleasant 
diversion and nothing more. The English press of 
those days loved to poke gentle fun at Butt for his au- 
dacity in submitting a Home-Rule plan. The Daily 
Telegraph suggested that of course Mr. Butt had no 
idea that the English people would receive his pro- 
posals seriously. And in the meanwhile conditions 
were growing rapidly worse in Ireland. 

It is an interesting sidelight on Butt's leadership 
that he took an especial interest in the land question. 
He directed the attention to the necessity of land re- 
form before the days of Davitt. It became an obses- 
sion with him. His greatest interest was taken in his 
land bills. Ultimately his plans were vindicated, but 
not until the gentle leader was sleeping in a graveyard 
in Donegal. During this period he wrote many illumi- 
nating pamphlets on the rights of the tenants. After 
the passage of the Land Act of 1870, which English 
statesmen, woefully ignorant of Irish conditions, hon- 
estly thought was a complete solution of the problem, 
Butt wrote an exhaustive book on the act, which dem- 
onstrated the utter worthlessness of the measure. The 
English press joked the author upon the absurdity of 
his conclusions and insisted that the tenants in Ireland 
were not only highly prosperous, but entirely satisfied. 
Such was the insolent attitude of the conqueror to- 
ward the sufferings of the conquered. 

In his work on The Irish People and the Irish 
Land Butt has given a touching picture of the condi- 
tions in Ireland which directed his great heart toward 
the land question : 



416 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"Let me say once for all how I came to write. Two 
years ago I had formed views of the land question, as, 
I suppose, most persons in my position have. I was 
satisfied of that which lies on the very surface — that in- 
security of tenure is a great evil. I was convinced that 
compensation for tenants' improvements was just and 
right ; but when I saw the people flying in masses from 
their homes I felt that really to understand the question 
we must go deeper than all this — that there must be some 
mischief deeply rooted in our social system, which, in a 
country blessed with the advantages like ours, produced 
results so strangely contrary to everything which the laws 
which regulate the history of nations or the conduct of 
classes or individuals might lead us to expect. 

"An accident turned my thoughts more intensely in 
this direction. Traveling on the Southern railroad, I 
witnessed one of those scenes too common in our coun- 
try, but which, I believe, no familiarity can make any 
person of feeling witness without emotion. The station 
was crowded with emigrants and their friends who came 
to see them off. There was nothing unusual in the oc- 
currence — nothing that is not often to be seen. Old men 
walked slowly, and almost hesitatingly, to the carriages 
that were to take them away from the country to which 
they were never to return. Railway porters placed in 
the train strange boxes and chests of every shape and 
size, sometimes even small articles of furniture, which 
told that their owners were taking with them their little 
all. In the midst of them a brother and a sister bade 
each other their last farewell — the mother pressed pas- 
sionately to her breast the son whom she shall never see 
again. Women carried or led to their places in the car- 
riages little children, who looked around as if they knew 
not what all this meant, but wept because they saw their 
mothers weeping. Strong men turned aside to brush aside 
the not unmanly tear. As the train began to move there 
was the uncontrollable rush of relatives crowding down 
to give the last handshakes. The railway servants pushed 
them back — we moved on more rapidly — and then rose 
from the groups we left behind a strange mingled cry 



ISAAC BUTT 417 

of wild farewells, and prayers, and blessings, and that 
melancholy wail of Irish sorrow which no one who has 
ever heard will ever forget — and we rushed on with our 
freight of sorrowing and reluctant exiles across a plain 
of fertility unsurpassed perhaps in any European soil. 
It was a light matter, but there was something in that 
picture — close to us rose the picturesque ruins which 
seemed to tell us from the past that there were days 
when an Irish race had lived, and not lived in poverty, 
upon that very plain. 

"These were scenes which surely no Irishman could 
see without emotion. The transient feeling they may 
excite is but of little use except as it may be suggestive 
of thought. It was impossible not to ask why were these 
people thus flying from their homes, deserting that rich 
soil. I could not but feel that no satisfactory solution 
of the question had yet been given. I asked myself if it 
were not a reproach to those among us whom God had 
raised a little above the people by the advantages of in- 
tellect and education if we gave no real earnest thought 
to such an inquiry; and I formed a purpose — I almost 
made to myself a vow — that I would employ as far as 
I could whatever little power I had acquired in investi- 
gating facts in endeavoring to trace the strange mystery 
to its origin." 

In pursuance of this vow, Butt, in session after ses- 
sion, pressed the land question upon the imperial par- 
liament, only to be laughed at for his pains. It was 
during the session of 1876 that he made his most stub- 
born fight, and delivered his most forceful speeches. 

The utter refusal of the English seriously to con- 
sider Irish affairs impressed upon Butt the necessity of 
some form of obstruction before Parnell and Biggar 
had commenced their obstructive tactics with which 
the public associates their names as the originators. 
During the session of 1875, Butt resorted to a mild 



418 THE IRISH ORATORS 

form of obstruction, mild in the light of the Parnell 
tactics, and still provocative enough to lead the Annual 
Register of that year to complain that "there was 
much obstruction of legislation because of the debates 
on the Irish coercion bill." And yet nothing was ac- 
complished. The Irish bills were presented, spoken 
upon, defeated — session after session. The "barbar- 
ous mosaic" of a party caused the leader endless worry. 
The people in Ireland began to despair of constitu- 
tional methods. As early as 1865, Butt had declared 
at a dinner at Canon Rice's at Queenstown, that Ire- 
land would have home rule within ten years, and now 
the people who had consented to the trial of a consti- 
tutional agitation, were growing impatient. The gen- 
tle leader lacked the power of discipline. His very 
good nature was his undoing. His private troubles 
still pursued him, and while, according to T. P. O'Con- 
nor, in his Parnell Movement, he still "made many 
sacrifices on the altar of the gods of indulgence," he 
never drank to excess. His creditors were more and 
more importunate. He was unable to devote his whole 
time to the cause. He was compelled to practise law 
to escape the debtors' prison, and, in his old age, when 
he had grown bulky and found it uncomfortable to 
travel, he was forced to make hurried trips to the 
courts in Dublin, reading his briefs on the train or 
boat. Had he possessed something of Parnell's cold- 
ness and hardness and tendency to apply the whip to 
subordinates, he might have forced a more generous 
support from his party, but such a policy was foreign 
to his nature. 

Unfortunately, the militant element in Ireland had 
lost faith in the effectiveness of his leadership. The 



ISAAC BUTT 419 

Fenians loved him, but felt that he was too gentle for 
the purpose. The admiration which the English poli- 
ticians felt for him reacted against him. A new man 
had entered the ranks of the Irish party — a man who 
hated England and was hated by Englishmen, a hard 
driver, a daring politician who was willing to skirt the 
edge of sedition itself, and he had commenced the ob- 
structive tactics which were to throw the house of com- 
mons into turmoil, to convert the sedate house into a 
bedlam, to prevent the transaction of business, and the 
radicals in Ireland were looking to him. With such 
tactics, Butt was temperamentally unable to agree. His 
health was now failing. He went about the house, 
worn and dejected. His mind was as brilliant as ever, 
and his eloquence as persuasive, but his party was slip- 
ping away. And then came the tragedy. He was dis- 
placed as president of the Home-Rule Confederation of 
Great Britain by Parnell. He never recovered from 
the blow, for it came suddenly and unexpectedly. He 
remained on the platform a while, and then, with the 
remark that he had to go to Dublin on important busi- 
ness, he excused himself. One of the men responsible 
for his displacement followed him into the corridor 
and told him how sorry he was that it was found nec- 
essary to select Parnell because of his advanced policy. 
The eyes of the old man filled with tears. "Ah, I 
never thought the Irishmen of England would do this 
to me," he said. The man who had helped to do the 
work was unable to reply. And then Butt did the 
characteristic thing — the kindly thing. He took the 
hand of the man who had struck him and pressed it 
warmly as a token that all was forgiven. 

His last public appearance was at Molesworth hall 



420 THE IRISH ORATORS 

on February fourth, 1879, while he was engaged in 
the famous case of Bagot v. Bagot. He was worn 
and sad, the stamp of death upon his kindly face. And 
now must be recorded a brutal thing — some, with 
whom he had wrought so well and fought so long, ig- 
nored him. In three months he was dead. The end 
came at Dundrum, county Dublin, May fifth, 1879. 
He was buried at Stranorla, in his native county of 
Donegal. And then, the whole of Ireland mourned 
the death of one of the purest, noblest, tenderest of 
her sons. 

VI 

Isaac Butt was in many respects a marvelous man. 
None of the Irish leaders was so profound in learn- 
ing. Few were more eloquent. None was more lova- 
ble. The fact that many Englishmen loved him was 
not evidence of disloyalty on his part to Ireland. No 
one could know him and not love him. Gladstone 
admired him, and Lord Randolph Churchill, who 
loved few men, was fond of him. One man who 
hated him and did not know him changed his opinion 
of him when he found that Butt's sister could not 
speak of his goodness with an unbroken voice. 

As an orator he was noted for his fluency, the pro- 
fundity of his thought, his clearness of statement, his 
persuasiveness, his logic. No orator since O'Connell 
has had a greater effect upon an Irish jury or on an 
Irish crowd. An illustration of his manner of appeal- 
ing to the emotional side of a jury may be given from 
his speech in the case of Clark v. Knox, in which his 
client, Clark, was suing for the breaking up of his 
home through eviction, A great number of evictions 



ISAAC BUTT 421 

had recently taken place, and the attention of the 
whole country was centered upon the trial at the 
Tullamore Assize. The speech of Butt was considered 
a wonderful performance by all who heard it, and at 
the conclusion the court room rang with applause. 
Speaking of the meaning of home he said: 

"When I addressed you on Saturday I only knew that 
you were jurors. I know now your position and ranks 
in the county. I can sympathize with the feelings of 
men like my client. I may venture to say that I know 
something of the feelings of the class to which you, gen- 
tlemen of the jury, belong ; and from a jury drawn from 
that class I will ask compensation for the sufferings of 
the peasant with more confidence than I would ask it 
from men of an inferior rank. The homes of these ten- 
ants are made desolate. Some of you will return to- 
night to your ancestral homes, and far off be the day 
when you and your children will be disturbed in those 
homes. Some of you, perhaps, are thinking of the re- 
ception that awaits you in those happy homes. 

" ' 'Tis sweet to hear the honest watchdog's bark 
Bay deepmouthed welcome as we draw near home ; 

'Tis sweet to know that there are eyes will mark 
Our coming and grow brighter when we come.' 

"You will return to homes in which elegance and re- 
finement will give grace and charm to the endearment 
of domestic life. But that is not what we value in wife 
and child and sacred home. There was a welcome as 
warm and as cordial awaited these poor men in the ten- 
ements, now thrown out upon the walls of Rathcore, and 
there were children there that looked out as fondly 
through the neighboring darkness for the returning of 
father. And the blaze of the hearth threw a light as 
genial and bright upon the little group that will never 
gather more around the fireside. 



422 THE IRISH ORATORS 

"And you, gentlemen, are pretty capable of estimating 
that the sacred endearments of home were more to these 
men than to us, for it is a dispensation of God that pov- 
erty, as one of its compensations, brings out the affec- 
tions of the human heart ; and the poor family that share 
the scanty meal, at which each stints himself that the 
others may have more, may enjoy a happiness in that 
meal unknown at the boards where luxury abounds." 

In the preparation of his speeches, he left little of 
the principal features to the so-called "inspiration of 
the moment." The writer is indebted to John Devoy, 
of the Gaelic-American, for an interesting story of his 
method. It was his custom to write his speeches out 
in full. This he did with great rapidity, being as fluent 
with his pen as with his tongue. This done, he read 
over what he had written very carefully, tore the 
manuscript to pieces, and threw it away. On one 
occasion, his secretary carefully collected the pieces, 
put them together, and with the manuscript in hand, 
followed Butt in the delivery of his speech, and found, 
to his amazement, that the orator had not deviated 
from the written speech to the extent of more than a 
hundred words. 

No better can this brief study of Isaac Butt be 
brought to a close than by quoting a passage from his 
National Conference speech of 1873, which is at once 
an illustration of his most effective style and an in- 
vocation from the grave in Donegal to the Irish peo- 
ple: 

"Let me say it — I do proudly — that I was one of those 
who did something for this cause. Over a torn and dis- 
tracted country, a country agitated by dissensions, weak- 
ened by distrust, we raised the banner on which we em- 






ISAAC BUTT 423 

blazoned the magic words, 'Home Rule/ We raised it 
with a feeble hand. Tremblingly, with hesitation, almost 
stealthily, we unfurled that banner to the breeze. But 
wherever the legend we have emblazoned on its folds 
was seen, the heart of the people moved to its words 
and the soul of the nation felt their power and their spell. 
Those words were passed from man to man along the 
valleys and the hillsides. Everywhere men, even those 
who had been despairing, turned to that banner with con- 
fidence and hope. 

"Thus far we have borne it. It is now for you to 
bear it on with more energy and more strength and with 
renewed vigor. We hand it over to you in this gather- 
ing of the nation. But oh, let no unholy hands approach 
it. Let no one come to the help of our country, or dare 
to lay his hand upon the ark of her magnificent and 
awful cause, who is not prepared never, never to desert 
that banner till it flies proudly over the portals of that 
'Old House and Home' — that old house which is asso- 
ciated with the memories of great Irishmen, and has been 
the scene of many glorious triumphs. Even while the 
blaze of those glories is at this moment throwing its 
splendor over the memory of us all, I believe in my soul 
that the parliament of regenerated Ireland will achieve 
triumphs more glorious, more lasting, more sanctified and 
holy than any by which her old parliament illumined the 
annals of our country and our race." 



IX 

CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 

The Obstruction of British Legislation; the Home-Rule Battles; 
the Land League Fights; the Enlistment of Irish- 
Americans in the Struggle 

T was just at the time the bottom was falling out 
of the Butt experiment in Irish politics that a new 
man appeared upon the scene. Of all the leaders in 
the century-old battle for Irish liberties he was the 
least Irish in his temperament and genius. He lacked 
the magnetism of O'Connell, the eloquence of Grattan, 
the fire and dash of Meagher, the lovable qualities of 
Butt — and he was everything that the typical Irishman 
is not — taciturn, calculating and retiring. He studied 
the political situation as he would that of a chess-board. 
He saw the necessity of united action. He understood 
the importance of consolidating all the patriotic ele- 
ments into one common army. He knew that the par- 
liamentarian could do nothing without a militant force 
behind him, and that the militant could accomplish 
nothing except through semi-constitutional methods. 
Coldly, calculatingly, sagaciously he set to work to 
find a common ground, and he found it in a plan to 
introduce militancy into the Irish party in the house of 
commons. Grasping eagerly at every revolutionary 
element in Ireland and attaching it as a fighting force 

424 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 425 

behind the parliamentary party, he soon created an or- 
ganization that startled the ministers of the empire. 
He turned English weapons against the English by ob- 
structing English legislation, and forced the govern- 
ment to deal with the Irish party. He organized 
the Irish exiles of the industrial centers of England 
and attached them to the Irish cause and thus intro- 
duced the Irish question into English politics. He 
rallied about him a party of sufficient magnitude to 
hold the balance of power in the house of commons, 
and he played with cabinets with the ease of a cat play- 
ing with a mouse. Upsetting ministries, defying gov- 
ernments, obstructing legislation, threatening revolu- 
tion, establishing the boycott, skirting sedition, he 
turned parliament into a bedlam, disorganized and dis- 
rupted parties, and made Ireland a vital force in the 
affairs of the empire. He introduced a new method 
into the Irish fight. He created a movement that could 
not be shot or incarcerated or coerced. He never com- 
promised, he never conciliated, he never trusted the 
enemy — he fought! And before he fell a victim to 
his own personal folly, he had introduced Fenianism 
into parliament, and injected parliamentarianism into 
the Fenians. Man of mystery, he moves across the 
page of history a calm, silent, saturnine figure — and 
posterity instinctively uncovers with mingled fear and 
admiration. Such in brief is Charles Stewart Parnell. 



While wandering about in his travels, John Henry 
Parnell, scion of a house famous in the political and 
literary history of Ireland, lingered long enough in 



426 THE IRISH ORATORS 

Washington to lose his heart to the brilliant and fiery 
daughter of Charles Stewart, a gallant admiral of the 
American navy. A strange match, in some respects, 
for he was utterly without ambition, and she was in- 
stinctively a lover of power. Between the two there 
was one common obsession — an inveterate, ineradica- 
ble hatred of England. Returning with his bride to 
Ireland, the traveler retired to his ancestral seat at 
Avondale, near the quaint little village of Rathdrum, 
and settled down to the uneventful life of a country 
gentleman. The situation was pleasant enough. The 
house itself, while not so imposing as others, pos- 
sessed the aristocratic dignity of a baronial mansion. 
Many men of genius had passed in and out its por- 
tals. In the little gallery, above the great hall, bands 
had once played to stately dances. On the wall of the 
hall hung a picture of a scene in the house of com- 
mons — Curran in one of his eloquent moments. From 
the windows one could see the poetic little river of 
Avonmore winding its way through the meadows, and 
beyond loomed the picturesque hills of Wicklow. 
Within easy walking distance was the beautiful vale of 
Avoca — the "sweet vale of Avoca" sung by Moore. 
And it was here, in this old house, amid these exquisite 
pastoral scenes, beloved of painters and poets, that 
Charles Stewart Parnell was born on June twenty- 
seven, 1846. 

The mystery which enfolds the latter life of the 
great Irish leader is not absent from his childhood. 
Delicate, morbidly sensitive, nervous, he was never- 
theless vivacious and cheerful and passionately de- 
voted to the members of his family. He inherited his 
father's devotion to home and his partiality to seclu- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 427 

sion. It does not appear that he was especially im- 
pressed by the brilliancy of his ancestors. It is hardly 
probable that he ever gave a passing glance at the elfish 
figure of the eloquent Cur ran. The poems of Thomas 
Parnell, the speeches of Sir John Parnell — for these he 
cared nothing. His boyhood seems to have been given 
up largely to games and fighting. 

It was in his sixth year that he made his first ac- 
quaintance with the England he so thoroughly hated, 
when he was sent to a boarding school in Somerset- 
shire, and it was during these years that his intense 
hatred for the English people first manifested itself. 
His preparatory course was characterized by a stub- 
born insubordination, utter idleness and indifference. 
He took no pains to conceal his dislike of his English 
schoolmates, and they were equally frank in their 
manifestations of contempt. Among the instructors 
he was as heartily disliked as among the students. 
The whole of his scholastic interest appears to have 
been centered on mathematics, and in this line he ex- 
celled. Reserved, cold, repellent, he went his way 
cherishing his hatred of the English. 

In his nineteenth year he was entered at Magdalen 
College, Cambridge, and here he remained four years 
without distinguishing himself, and left without tak- 
ing his degree. His hate for the English, which must 
have been an inherited hate, because he knew prac- 
tically nothing of the history of the oppression of his 
race, was only intensified at Cambridge. He had as 
little to do with the English students as possible. 
"These English," he said to his brother, "do not like 
us and we must stand up to them." This feeling was 
instinctive with him. It never left him. It was to be- 



428 THE IRISH ORATORS 

come the inspiration of his career. It was to win to 
his constitutional agitation the support of the revolu- 
tionary societies! If he never entered an Irish school 
in boyhood, he was to carry back to Ireland from the 
schools across the channel an inveterate hate of the 
oppressor. One thing, then, stands out in connection 
with his period of education — his hate of England. 
This, we shall find unwavering to the end. 

The period previous to his participation in politics 
was as much of a puzzle as that of his youth. When 
he returned to Avondale he gave every indication of 
a disposition to settle down to the prosy, peaceful 
country life of a country gentleman. His education 
had been a dismal failure. Of the inspiring story of 
Ireland's century-old fight for the righting of her 
wrongs he knew as little as of the tribal life of the 
African wilderness. Then followed a series of events 
that turned his mind into political channels. 

One day he accompanied his favorite sister, Fanny, 
the poet, to the office of The Irish People, the revolu- 
tionary journal of the Fenians, and then learned, to 
his mystification, that the gentle, lovable, womanly 
Fanny was an ardent Fenian. This interested him. 

A little later, when the writ of habeas corpus had 
been suspended, and the Castle was proceeding vig- 
orously against the Fenians, a crowd of insolent police 
pushed into the home of his mother, where the lord 
lieutenant had often broken bread, and searched the 
premises for evidence against his sister, who was 
forced to fly by night from the protection of her own 
roof. This outraged him. 

And then came the legal assassination of the Man- 
chester martyrs, and Parnell realized, for the first time, 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELIT 429 

that England sat in judgment on Irish affairs, and that 
his own people were impotent slaves. This set him 
to thinking, but he kept his own councils, then, as 
afterward. 

It was about this time that the vote by ballot had 
been extended, and he eagerly seized upon this reform 
as an opportunity for fighting England in her own 
household, through the organization of an Irish party, 
militant, uncompromising, England-hating, which 
should enter parliament and compromise the very in- 
stitutions of the enemy by reducing them to impotency 
and ridicule. His plans were forming. 

At length, a vacancy having occurred in the repre- 
sentation of Dublin, he decided to make the plunge, 
and offered himself for the constituency. He had 
nothing to offer to the Irish leaders but his name — 
and that meant much. "I will trust any of the Par- 
nells," said John Martin, one of the veterans of '48, 
at a conference of the party managers, and the aspir- 
ing politician was summoned. A distinguished group 
of veteran leaders awaited him. He reached the hall a 
stranger — a tall, delicate, slender youth — and the vet- 
erans gave a tremendous ovation to the scion of one 
of the most patriotic houses in Ireland. Without the 
slightest expression of appreciation, he proceeded to 
the platform, deadly pale, but cold and with downcast 
head. He began to speak and he instantly made an 
impression. He impressed T. W. Russell with his 
utter political ignorance, and he impressed O'Connor 
Power with the feeling that he possessed nothing but 
a name. It was then too late to turn back, however, 
and Parnell entered the contest, which resulted, after 
a short sharp battle, in his defeat. Then it was when 



430 THE IRISH ORATORS 

he mystified the leaders of his party, who had given 
him three hundred pounds for election expenses. The 
contest had cost him two thousand pounds, and, after 
his defeat, he returned the three hundred pounds to 
his party, untouched. Even more mystified than the 
party leaders were the intimate friends and relatives of 
the defeated candidate, who beheld him returning to 
Avondale bubbling over with enthusiasm, confidence 
and fight, and exclaiming, "Well, boys, I am beaten, 
but they are not done with me yet." 

It was in the spring of 1875 that his opportunity 
came with a vacancy in the representation of Meath, 
and Parnell instantly was put up by the Nationalists. 
It is interesting to know that his candidacy did not 
meet with the unqualified approval of all the National- 
ists, many of whom made strenuous efforts to persuade 
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy to stand instead. During 
the contest Parnell spoke without much effect, but ut- 
terly without embarrassment, and was elected. There 
was much enthusiasm at Trim, where the declaration 
of the poll was made, but while the crowds were cheer- 
ing and the bonfires blazing, the new member of par- 
liament was discovered walking alone with a cold air 
of detachment from the parochial house to his hotel. 
The crowd made a rush, picked him up, carried him 
several times around the bonfire that was blazing in 
his honor and set him on a cask, where he made a 
brief speech of appreciation. And now, what will he 
do with it? 

In his recent work, The History of the Irish Par- 
liamentary Party, F. H. O'Donnell lays great stress 
upon Parnell's utter lack of preparation for a career 
of political leadership, and especially upon the density 




Sydney P. Hall Photograph by Geoghegan 

Charles Stewart Parnell 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 431 

of his ignorance of Irish history at the time of his 
election to parliament. Of this there can be no doubt. 
He had heard of Grattan's parliament — that was all. 
He had listened rather listlessly no doubt to the rec- 
ollections of '98 from the lips of a number of old 
men. He was familiar with the name of O'Connell, 
but of his great career he knew practically nothing. 
He had never heard of the Grey Coercion bill, which 
had meant so much to his countrymen. He knew about 
the Manchester martyrs and the Fenian Brotherhood 
— and that was about the extent of his historical 
knowledge. As an orator he had been a tragic failure. 
As for the leadership of men he had demonstrated no 
capacity at all — indeed, had manifested rather a dis- 
position to drive men from him rather than to attract 
them to him. And yet within four years we shall find 
him lashing his hated England into furious frenzy, 
and awakening a long-slumbering hope in the breasts 
of the Irish people. And through it all we shall find 
him the same, cold, distant, mysterious personality — ■ 
the same inexplicable sphinx. 



II 



On the day that Parnell took his seat in the house 
of commons, Isaac Butt, the leader of the Irish party, 
sauntered over to Joseph Biggar, a rough and tumble 
fighter from Ulster, and instructed the unpolished but 
patriotic Presbyterian merchant to take the floor and 
hold it for a while. All unwittingly, Butt prepared 
the way for his own ultimate undoing. The compara- 
tively uncouth subordinate took the floor and held it 
with a speech of interminable length, reading reams 



432 THE IRISH ORATORS 

of reports, pages of statistics, a goodly portion of the 
Blue Book, and a fair proportion of the Statutes, un- 
til the English members sought relief in flight to the 
cloak rooms and corridors. One desperate member 
called attention to the absence of a quorum. Mr. 
Biggar resumed his seat until the house again filled, 
when he continued his speech — reading from the 
newspapers. At length, after three hours had been 
consumed, the speaker took advantage of the rule to 
the effect that the member's voice must reach the 
speaker's ear to call the Ulster patriot's attention to his 
apparent inability to make himself heard on account of 
the condition of his voice. 

"Ah," smiled the imperturbable Mr. Biggar, "that is 
because I am too far away" — and with that he gath- 
ered together his hastily collected and none too care- 
fully selected library and his glass of water and moved 
down almost under the speaker's nose. 

"Since you have not heard me," purred the inno- 
cent Mr. Biggar, "perhaps I should begin all over 
again." And he continued an hour longer, while the 
English members groaned and cursed inwardly. 

During this performance Mr. Biggar had one amused 
and sympathetic auditor in the person of Parnell, who 
noted with infinite delight the maddening effect upon 
the hated Englishmen and the possibilities of obstruct- 
ing the transaction of business. In the brisk crude 
merchant from Ulster he beheld a kindred spirit — un- 
lettered, perhaps, uninformed possibly as to Irish his- 
tory, and no doubt knowing little of the finesse of 
parliamentary procedure, but possessed of fighting 
proclivities and a boundless contempt for English 
opinion. Parnell made a mental note of Biggar and 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 433 

his performance. In the smoking room the new mem- 
ber for Meath never tired of listening to Biggar's 
ruminations of the gentlemanly policy of the Irish 
party. "What's the good?" he would exclaim, brist- 
ling. "They stop our bills, why don't we stop theirs ? 
No legislation ; that's the policy, sir ; that's the policy. 
Butt's a fool; too gentlemanly; we're all too gentle- 
manly." And there was another member whose views 
were music to the ears of Parnell. This was Joseph 
Ronayne, who had sat for Cork since '72, and had 
come to the conclusion that England would never con- 
sider Irish business until the Irish prevented the con- 
sideration of English legislation. Parnell was in- 
stinctively partial to the pursuit of such a policy. It 
spelled action, it meant fight. 

But with that patience for which he became famous 
he bided his time, kept his own counsels and prepared. 
"An obscure, inactive member/' says Mr. O'Donnell in 
his history. Perhaps so — but not an indifferent one. 

During the first session he scarcely opened his mouth. 
He was busy studying the battlefield, acquainting 
himself with the strategic points, familiarizing him- 
self with the weaknesses in the defenses of the enemy. 
Utterly ignorant of parliamentary procedure and cog- 
nizant of the necessity of mastering the generalship 
of the floor, he read no books to glean the necessary 
information. There was nothing of the subjective in 
Parnell — he was all objective. He learned by experi- 
ence. He mastered the rules by breaking them. He 
converted the ministers into head-masters and learned 
from them. There was nothing of false pride, noth- 
ing of affectation in his nature, and he frankly plead 
guilty to his ignorance and unblushingly asked for in- 



434 THE IRISH ORATORS 

formation. "How do you get material for question- 
ing the ministers?" he asked one day of an old mem- 
ber. With a pitying smile he was informed of the 
process. "Ah," said Parnell, "I must ask a question 
myself some day." And it was through careful ob- 
servation and the unembarrassed propounding of in- 
numerable questions that he became a perfect master 
of the rules of debate, a parliamentary general un- 
equaled, perhaps, by any other member but Gladstone. 
At the close of his first session he remained obscure, 
but he had learned the game. He had done no shoot- 
ing but he had possessed himself of arms and ammuni- 
tion. He emerged from his first session thoroughly 
satisfied of the futility of mere parliamentary warfare 
and of the necessity of organizing a virile fighting 
force outside the house of commons. Thus do we 
find him from the very beginning cleverly laying his 
plans for the utilization of the Fenians. A fighting 
party within, a fighting force without — this was Par- 
nell's plan of campaign. 

The conditions during the session of '76 were au- 
spicious for the perfection of his plan. Gladstone had 
retired and Disraeli held the reins of power, with 
Hicks-Beach occupying the post as chief secretary for 
Ireland. Divided on all other propositions, the Eng- 
lish parties had tacitly agreed to move as a single 
body against any proposal of remedial legislation for 
the subjugated people across the channel. The custo- 
mary batch of Irish bills were presented by Butt and, 
after scant consideration, overwhelmingly voted down. 
The Irish party was a pitiful and impotent phantom — 
hardly a shadow in the sunshine of English com- 
placency. The brief and contemptuous speeches of 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 435 

ministers against the, Irish bills only served to ac- 
centuate the humiliation of the Irish people. It was 
during the delivery of one of these ministerial re- 
marks, however, that Parnell found the opportunity 
of making a subtle appeal for Fenian support. 

While discussing, quite languidly, the Home-Rule 
bill, Hicks-Beach expressed his surprise that any one 
should fancy that home rule would result in the re- 
lease of the Fenian prisoners or the "Manchester mur- 
derers." Up to the characterization of the Man- 
chester martyrs, Parnell had sat in an apparently 
bored silence, but at the words "the Manchester mur- 
derers," he startled the sedate house by crying out 
with intense vehemence — "No, no." The house was 
ineffably shocked. It was pleased in its self-com- 
placency to interpret Parnell's protest as a justification 
for murder. Hicks-Beach cast a withering look of 
scorn upon the obscure member from Meath, and amid 
English cheers expressed his regret that "there is 
an honorable member who will apologize for murder." 
From every section of the house came the arrogant 
cry, "withdraw," "withdraw." And then, to the 
amazement of the representatives of English con- 
stituencies, the obscure Irishman, whom they had as- 
sumed to have been crushed under the weight of their 
scorn, rose with a cold and composed dignity, and in 
frigid cutting tones replied : 



"The right honorable gentleman looked at me so di- 
rectly when he said that he regretted that any member of 
the house should apologize for murder that I wish to say, 
as publicly as I can, that I do not believe and never shall 
believe that any murder was committed at Manchester." 



436 THE IRISH ORATORS 

There was a moment of awed silence — a few spas- 
modic cheers from the startled Irish members, and 
the incident closed as far as the house was concerned. 
But beyond the walls of Westminster and throughout 
Ireland, the bold defiance of Parnell passed like an 
electric shock. The Fenians, who had grown tired of 
the gentlemanly methods of Butt, were not only pleased 
at the defense of their martyrs, but they were delighted 
at the unique spectacle of an Irish member of parlia- 
ment accepting an English challenge. Their eyes were 
now turned to Parnell, and, from afar, they followed 
his activities with an intense interest. They knew 
that there was at least one member of the parliamentary 
party who would fight, one at least who frankly hated 
England. We have it on the authority of Barry 
O'Brien that this incident marked the beginning of the 
close alliance which was to follow between the Fenians 
and the member from Meath. 

Meanwhile, the advanced Nationalists sent a deputa- 
tion to President Grant with an address of congratula- 
tion on the centennial of American independence, and 
Parnell was placed upon the delegation. It was upon 
his return from America that the future leader de- 
livered his first ambitious speech at a Home-Rule meet- 
ing in Liverpool. It appears that but for the substance 
of this address it would have been a tragic failure. The 
delivery was exceedingly bad, halting, nervous, irri- 
tating to the audience, which momentarily feared a 
complete breakdown. Standing with clenched fists 
which he nervously shook while awaiting the proper 
word, he presented a pitiful picture. His anxious 
friends upon the platform at times whispered a word 
that seemed required, but — and this is worth noting — 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 437 

not once did Parnell accept the word, and not once 
did he fail to improve upon the word suggested. It 
was the substance of the speech, however, that is worth 
noticing as indicating the trend of his thoughts just 
previous to his acceptance of the grave responsibilities 
of leadership. He said, in part: 

"You have also another duty to perform, which is to 
educate public opinion in England upon Irish questions, 
which I have looked upon as a difficult and an almost 
impossible task — so difficult that I have often been 
tempted to think that it was no use trying to educate 
English public opinion. The English press encourages 
prejudice against Ireland. Englishmen themselves are 
in many respects fair-minded and reasonable, but it is 
almost impossible to get at them — it requires intelligence 
almost superhuman to remove the clouds of prejudice 
under which they have lived during their lives. I know 
the difficulties of the Irish people in England. It is not 
easy for people, living as they are in friendship with 
their English neighbors, to keep themselves separated 
from English political organizations, but they have never 
been afraid to lay aside private and local considerations 
in favor of supporting their fellow countrymen at home. 
Our position in Ireland is peculiar. One party says we 
go too far in the Home-Rule agitation while another party 
says we do not go far enough. You have been told we 
have lowered the national flag — that the Home-Rule cause 
is not the cause of Ireland as a nation, and that we will 
degrade our country into the position of a province. I 
deny all this. There is no reason why Ireland under 
Home Rule would not be Ireland a nation in every sense 
and for every purpose that is right she should be a na- 
tion. I have lately seen in the city of New York a review 
of the militia, in which five or six thousand armed and 
trained men took part, at least half of them being veter- 
ans of the war. They marched past with firm step and 
armed with improved weapons. They were at the com- 



438 THE IRISH ORATORS 

mand of the legislature of New York and they could not 
budge one inch from the city without the orders of the 
governor. If in Ireland we could ever have under Home 
Rule such a militia, they would be in position to protect 
the interests of Ireland as a nation, while they would 
never wish to trespass upon the integrity of the British 
empire, or to do harm to those they then would call their 
English brothers. It is a foolish want of confidence that 
prevents Englishmen and the English government from 
trusting Ireland. They know that Ireland is determined 
to be an armed nation, and they fear to see her so, for 
they remember how a section of the Irish people in 1782, 
with arms in their hands, wrung from England legisla- 
tive independence. Without a full measure of Home Rule 
for Ireland no Irishman can ever rest content." 



It was in his Liverpool speech that Parnell began to 
make his appeal to the Irish in England who were in 
later years to become such potent factors in placing 
the English parties at the mercy of the man from 
Meath. He had already worked out his plan of an 
Irish party standing absolutely aloof from all English 
party entanglements, and prepared to fight any min- 
istry of any political complexion that refused to. con- 
cede Irish rights. To impart the needed virility to such 
a party, he knew that it would have to be a fighting 
machine that would appeal to the Fenians. But it 
was not alone the Fenians that he wanted to enlist in 
the war he was planning — it was every element of the 
Irish people. It was in the harmonizing of the various 
divergent elements that Parnell disclosed his marvelous 
political sagacity, his subtle diplomacy. The Fenians 
stood for force, and the church looked with distrust 
upon the fighting brotherhood. Parnell knew that one 
without the other would be fatal. He set to work to 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 439 

compromise the differences, to amalgamate the ele- 
ments, to consolidate the whole of Ireland in one su- 
preme effort. Hopeless to all others, it was possible 
to the patient Parnell, and he succeeded. 

It was at the beginning of the session of 77 that 
Parnell lead off with his fighting policy in open oppo- 
sition to the gentlemanly tactics of the leader of his 
party. The queen's speech had scarcely mentioned 
Ireland, and it disclosed the determination of the min- 
istry to refuse any consideration to Irish subjects. The 
Irish members were furious at the slight, but the gen- 
tle Butt declined to enter upon a policy of deliberate 
obstruction to English legislation. This over-delicacy 
of the leader precipitated the revolt. The man from 
Meath, who had defended the Manchester martyrs, 
and the merchant from Ulster determined upon a policy 
of persistent and systematic obstruction, and in the 
Mutiny and Prison bills they found satisfactory objects 
of attack. Every possible expedient conceivable to a 
skilled parliamentarian was resorted to in the effort 
to delay proceedings. With an icy politeness Parnell 
made his objections, offered his motions, moved his 
amendments, with a solemnity and businesslike earnest- 
ness discussed his propositions as though he were in- 
tensely interested in the perfection of the English 
measures. There was nothing offensive or unduly ag- 
gressive in his manner. There was not the slightest 
suggestion of an ulterior motive in his tone. 

At times, when the English members had been ag- 
gravated to the breaking point, the Irish member would 
graciously withdraw a motion or accept an amend- 
ment, leaving the enemy more helpless than before. 
That he possessed an uncannily dry humor was mani- 



440. THE IRISH ORATORS 

fested once during the fight on the Prison bill, and 
especially when one of his supporters asked that the 
committee on the bill should be put off because of the 
early departure of Irish members to attend the grand 
juries at the assizes in Ireland. This was glaringly 
an act of obstruction, and Parnell arose with great dig- 
nity to enter a protest. "I think the business of the 
nation should be attended to before local affairs," he 
said solemnly, "and the attendance at the grand juries 
is no reason for postponing the committee." The Eng- 
lish members, altogether at sea, scarcely knew whether 
to cheer or groan. It was in connection with the 
Mutiny bill, however, that Parnell's new tactics aroused 
the greatest fury in the house. On April twelfth, with 
the aid of Biggar, he fought clause after clause of the 
bill until almost midnight, when the member from 
Ulster rose with a motion to report progress on the 
ground that owing to the lateness of the hour and the 
pendency of numerous important amendments, it would 
be quite impossible to conclude the consideration of 
the bill that night. Parnell heartily supported his 
colleague — and the storm broke. It was on this occa- 
sion that Butt was persuaded publicly to repudiate and 
disapprove of the methods of his obstreperous sub- 
ordinate. His speech of renunciation was greeted with 
the thunderous applause of all the English members, 
but that speech and that applause sounded the death 
knell of his leadership. Not only did the Fenians feel 
that it showed a popularity among Englishmen incom- 
patible with proper loyalty to Ireland, but they looked 
upon his attack upon an Irishman in the face of the 
enemy as an unpardonable violation of the rules of 
war. The reply of Parnell was characteristic. Coldly, 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 441 

with icy dignity, apparently without the slightest feel- 
ing of resentment, he brushed aside the Butt repudia- 
tion with the simple sentence, "The honorable and 
learned gentleman was not in the house when I at- 
tempted to explain why I had not put down notice of 
my amendments." Henceforth the breach between 
Butt and Parnell widened rapidly. 

Back of Parnell stood now the Fenians, the rad- 
icals, the fighting forces and ultimately the church. 
The Home-Rule Confederation of Great Britain, dom- 
inated quietly by the Fenian element, leaned strongly 
toward Parnell, and it was under its auspices that 
Parnell was enabled to address numerous Home-Rule 
meetings in England and Scotland. In all these 
speeches Parnell met the issue of obstruction boldly 
and defiantly, albeit with tact and diplomacy. In a 
speech at Glasgow he said: 

"I am satisfied to abide by the decision of the Irish 
people. Are they for peace and conciliation or for hos- 
tility and war? (Cries of 'War.') Are you for making 
things convenient for England and for advancing Eng- 
lish interests? If so, I will bow to your decision, but 
my constituents will have to get some one else to rep- 
resent them." 

A little later he addressed a great meeting at Man- 
chester, on which occasion he said : 

"For my part I must tell you that I do not believe in 
a policy of conciliation of English feeling or English 
prejudice. I believe that you may go on trying to con- 
ciliate English prejudice until the day of judgment and 
that you will not get the breadth of my nail from them. 
What did you ever get in the past by trying to conciliate 
them?" 



442 THE IRISH ORATORS 

A voice — "Nothing except the sword." (Applause.) 
"Did you get the abolition of tithes by the conciliation 
of our English taskmasters? No; it was because we 
adopted different measures. (Applause.) I rather think 
that O'Connell in his time was not of a very conciliatory 
disposition, and that at least during a part of his career 
he was about the best-abused Irishman living. (Laugh- 
ter and applause.) Catholic emancipation was gained 
because an English king and his minister feared revolu- 
tion. (Applause.) Why was the English church in Ire- 
land disestablished and disendowed? Why was some 
measure of protection given to the Irish tenant ? It was 
because there was an explosion at Clerkenwell and be- 
cause a lock was shot off a prison van at Manchester. 
(Great applause.) We will never gain anything from 
England unless we tread on her toes ; we will never gain 
a sixpenny worth from her by conciliation." (Applause.) 

This was a bold and open bid for Fenian support, 
and his reference to revolution and the affair at Man- 
chester convinced the Fenians that while Parnell might 
be a parliamentarian he was not averse to fighting in 
an emergency. His speeches strengthened him im- 
measurably in the country and this popular indorse- 
ment encouraged him to increase his obstructive ac- 
tivities in the house. 

Thus the battle continued. A little later, during the 
discussion of the South African bill, the government 
being anxious to put the bill through the committee 
stage that night, Parnell returned to the attack. Late 
in the afternoon one of Parnell's supporters moved to 
report progress, and Parnell supported the motion on 
the ground that additional information was needed be- 
fore the house could intelligently act. This aroused 
the indignation of Sir William Harcourt, who di- 
rectly charged the Irish leader with deliberate obstruc- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 443 

tion. The man from Meath listened coldly to the 
arraignment, and then, without paying the slightest 
heed, he turned to the speaker and began, "Sir, I will 
now continue my observation." This was greeted 
with a storm of yells. Bedlam broke loose. The Eng- 
lish were beside themselves with impotent fury. The 
chair called the speaker to order. The Irish leader 
condescendingly complimented the chair upon the fair- 
ness of his rulings, and continued. The turmoil be- 
came so loud that the voice of Parnell could not be 
heard — at which he calmly walked from his place to 
the table and proceeded with his remarks. It was at 
this juncture that he solemnly warned the English 
members that by quarreling among themselves they 
were wasting valuable time. At seven o'clock in the 
morning the chancellor of the exchequer complimented 
the Parnellites upon their plucky fight and begged 
them to yield in view of the physical exhaustion of all 
the members, but the man from Meath was adamant 
to the compliment. It was only after twenty-six hours 
of such scenes that the government prevailed. 

The effect on Parnell' s fortunes by such conduct was 
magical. The Fenians, who had lost all confidence in 
a parliamentary fight, could not but admire the bat- 
tling ability of the new leader. They were now con- 
vinced that their hate of England could not go beyond 
that of Parnell. They could not but glory in the 
manner in which he had humiliated all the English 
parties by reducing English government to a condition 
bordering on impotency. And throughout Ireland, 
into every nook and corner, the news was carried that 
an Irishman had stood up to the English in their own 
bailiwick and fought them to a finish — holding them 



444 THE IRISH ORATORS * 

up to the ridicule of the world. The spirit of Ireland 
was aroused. The fighting blood was stirred. The 
unification of Irish sentiment followed, and Charles 
Stewart Parnell became, for the first time, the idol of 
the people. We shall now see him following up his ad- 
vantage and perfecting his fighting machine. 

Ill 

The militant methods to which Parnell resorted in 
his parliamentary fights had the effect of breaking 
down in the minds of a very large proportion of the 
Fenians the idea that nothing could possibly be accom- 
plished through constitutional agitation. At the same 
time, his manifest hatred of England, together with 
his audacity and courage, impelled many of the more 
radical of the Fenians to believe that ne was wasting 
his time and talents in a hopeless cause, and an earnest 
effort was made to persuade him to enter the Fenian 
Brotherhood. Importuned at various times and with 
persistency to join the organization, he steadfastly 
refused to become a working member. He had no de- 
sire to be in on the inner counsels. He preferred 
apparently not to know all the plans that were incubat- 
ing in the Fenian mind. If anything of a revolu- 
tionary or lawless nature was being contemplated he 
wished to remain in ignorance of it — but he didn't 
propose to criticize it. It was his idea that the Fenians 
from without should be permitted to go their way and 
all he asked was that it should not be in a direction 
contrary to the way trod by the Irish party. 

"I do not want to break up your movement," he said 
to one of the number who was inviting him to join. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 445 

"On the contrary, I wish it to go on. Collect arms, do 
everything you are doing, but let the open movement 
have a chance, too. We can both help each other, but 
I am sure I can be of more use in the open movement." 
It was this peculiar relationship which led many to be- 
lieve that at heart Parnell was a revolutionist and was 
in secret sympathy with "political crimes." He doubt- 
less looked with favor upon that phase of the revolu^ 
tionary movement which made its appeal to the masses 
of the people. He always left the impression with his 
Fenian compatriots that he appreciated their friendly 
attitude toward him and that he entertained a secret 
sympathy for their purposes — but he never committed 
himself as to the revolutionary plans of the organiza- 
tion. If he was strong with the Fenians, he was per- 
haps even stronger with the Clan-na-Gaels of America, 
who had been deeply impressed by his new idea of par- 
liamentary warfare. When they sent an agent to 
London to discuss with him a sort of alliance, he at- 
tended a meeting called for the purpose, listened to the 
discussion, kept his own counsel, committed himself 
to nothing, and yet in some subtle mysterious manner 
conveyed the unmistakable impression that he was in 
reality of the same stern stuff as themselves. The 
fact is, according to Barry O'Brien, who was doubtless 
in position to judge, that Parnell understood that the 
parliamentary movement would be ridiculous but for 
the cooperation of the Fenians, but he did not pro- 
pose to be placed in a position where he would no 
longer be able to direct the movement. It was his 
idea to let the Fenians build up their organization to 
the utmost and then use it as the fighting force in the 
background behind his Irish party. It has been said 



446 THE IRISH _ORATORS 

that lie often skirted sedition, often advanced to the 
verge of lawlessness, but never quite crossed the line* 
Thus did he win the confidence of the revolutionaries. 
They felt that if the parliamentary movement failed 
they could count upon Parnell; and pending the trial 
of parliamentarianism they were willing that Parnell 
should count upon them. 

In 1878 another element was introduced into the 
Irish situation — and not of Parnell's initiative. Late 
in the summer of that year Michael Davitt appeared in 
America upon an important mission — to advise with 
the leaders of the Clan-na-Gael on the new aspect of 
the constitutional movement. Himself a Fenian, he 
was about won over to the program of the new leader. 
Indeed, before leaving for America he had a confer- 
ence with Parnell, to whom he divulged his purpose. 
The leader listened in sympathetic silence. He offered 
no suggestions. He sent no message. He kept his 
counsel. On reaching New York, Davitt met John 
Devoy, likewise a revolutionist, and now the champion 
of the new departure. These two got their heads to- 
gether on a new plan for enlisting the farmers in the 
national movement through the introduction of an 
agrarian reform plank into the party platform, and 
within a month they had succeeded in committing the 
Clan to their idea through the passage of resolutions 
attributing the miserable conditions existing in Ire- 
land to the wretched land system in operation. It 
was their intention to make land reform the para- 
mount plank of the platform of the Parnell party, and 
as soon as they had won over the majority of the lead- 
ers of the Clan, John Devoy, now the veteran editor 
of the Gaelic-American, cabled Parnell, proposing an 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 447 

alliance between the revolutionary and the constitu- 
tional parties. The agitation of the land problem look- 
ing to an ultimate peasant proprietary, the exclusion 
of all sectarian issues, the unification of all Irish mem- 
bers of parliament on all votes, whether on questions 
of empire or Home-Rule — this was the proposition 
submitted to Parnell on behalf of a most powerful or- 
ganization. And to this proposition, from such a 
source, Parnell made no reply. The fact that this lack 
of common courtesy failed to dampen the hopes of the 
intrepid Devoy, or to lead to the repudiation of the 
leader, indicates the almost uncanny influence that the 
mysterious personality of Parnell exercised over the 
people. He had refused to commit himself — and they 
were satisfied of his cooperation. 

Meanwhile, Davitt returned to Ireland and inaugu- 
rated his now famous land fight by the organization 
of "Tenant Defense Associations" throughout the 
country. The conditions were ripe for some such 
movement. The Land Act of 1870 had proved its fu- 
tility as a measure of relief, and the downtrodden 
peasantry, in dire distress, was looking forward to 
another period of intense suffering. They foresaw 
their inability to meet their rents followed by more 
wholesale evictions — those heart-breaking incidents so 
familiar to the Irish people. The landlords, with char- 
acteristic effrontery and brutality, were manifesting no 
disposition to prevent the oncoming distress. Hope- 
less and desperate, their backs to the wall, the tenants 
were prepared for any proposition looking to the 
amelioration of their condition. The meetings through- 
out the island were largely attended, and among the 
.dominating figures at these public gatherings the most 



448 THE IRISH_ ORATORS 

prominent were the Fenians. The nationalist move- 
ment was beginning to reach the submerged, the most 
downtrodden and browbeaten element in Ireland. 

And Parnell — what was he doing at this juncture? 

He was studying the field, pulsing the people, getting 
his bearings, considering the general effect upon his 
movement, determining for himself the possibilities of 
the new association. He abstained from attending the 
Davitt meetings — but he got his reports. He looked 
down upon the new movement from the great height of 
his political genius. At length he was urged to attend 
a land meeting at Westport, County Mayo, and after 
some hesitation he decided to take the plunge. It was 
in his speech on this occasion that his brief injunction 
to the tenants, "Keep a firm grip upon your home- 
steads, ,, was to intensify the enthusiasm of the militant 
forces and to startle the conservatives of England. He 
said: 

"A fair rent is a rent a tenant can reasonably pay 
according to the times; but in bad times a tenant can 
not be expected to pay as much as he did in good times, 
three or four years ago. If such rents are insisted upon 
a repetition of the scenes of 1847 and 1848 will be wit- 
nessed. Now, what must we do to induce the land- 
lords to see the position ? You must show the landlords 
that you intend to hold a firm grip on your homesteads 
and lands. You must not allow yourselves to be dis- 
possessed as you were dispossessed in 1847. You must 
not allow your small holdings to be turned into large ones. 
I am not supposing that the landlords will remain deaf 
to the voice of reason, but I hope they may not, and that 
on those properties on which the rents are out of all 
proportion to the times that a reduction may be made, 
and that immediately. If not you must help yourselves, 
and the public opinion of the world will stand by you 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 449 

and support you in your struggle to defend your home- 
steads. I should be deceiving you if I told you that there 
was any use in relying upon the exertions of the Irish 
members of parliament in your behalf. I think that if 
your members are determined and resolute that they 
could help you, but I am afraid they won't. I hope that 
I may be wrong, and that you may rely upon the consti- 
tutional action of your parliamentary representatives in 
this the sore time of your need and trial ; but above all 
things remember that God helps him who helps himself, 
and that by showing such a public spirit as you have 
shown here to-day, by coming in your thousands in the 
face of every difficulty, you will do more to show the 
landlords the necessity of dealing justly with you than 
if you had one hundred and fifty Irish members in the 
house of commons." 

The effect of this cold, stern proposition of resist- 
ance was further to inflame the tenants, enthuse the 
Fenians and startle the government with its doctrine 
of revolt. It meant something rather new in the agra- 
rian fights of Ireland. It meant war! And meanwhile 
the government, either through stupidity or stubborn- 
ness, made no effort to meet the trouble on the way. 
Conditions grew rapidly worse, and it soon became evi- 
dent that thousands of the suffering peasantry would 
find themselves face to face with evictions. And then 
came the monster meeting at Limerick in the spring of 
'79 — a meeting pregnant with the spirit of revolution, 
pulsating with passion. In the midst of the seething, 
surging multitude, shouting for a republic, demanding 
an appeal to force, Parnell sat calm, cold, unmoved. 
When called upon to speak he delivered his message in 
a few crisp, energetic, dictatorial sentences and his ad- 
vice was this : "Stand by your guns and there is no 
power on earth which can prevail, against the hun- 



450 THE IRISH ORATORS 

r dreds of thousands of tenant farmers in this country." 
This was not demagoguery — it was treason ! It was a 
bugle call to the people to rise and stand erect. And 
then some time later came the great meeting at Tip- 
perary where Parnell again sought to stiffen the backs 
of the tenants to a fighting posture : "You must rely 
upon your own determination which has enabled you 
to survive the famine years and to be present here to- 
day, and if you are determined, I tell you that you have 
the game in your hands." 

The country was now ablaze, and tenant defense 
associations were organized and active in every nook 
and corner of the island. It was at this juncture that 
Davitt determined upon the domination of these scat- 
tered organizations through a central committee estab- 
lished in the city of Dublin. It was now apparent to 
Parnell that a movement of immense magnitude and , 
potentiality had been set on foot and that it was im- 
possible to foresee the effect upon the future. The 
central committee smacked of Jacobinism. The whole 
thing pointed to revolution. Possibly it was to be a 
Frankenstein. But he was now convinced that noth- 
ing could stop it and that it would inevitably become 
an engine for immense harm or good. It was Fenian- 
ism turned in a practical direction. In a collision, the 
parliamentary party would go down. He had absorbed 
the Fenian. He now took in the Land League. Thus 
did Parnell subordinate everything to Home Rule — 
thus did he enlist every element in Ireland in the fight. 

As the Land League meetings multiplied in number 
and intensified in determination the government, 
which had taken no action to prevent the threatened 
distress, decided to proceed against the new movement, 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 451 

and Davitt, along with others, was arrested. The fol- 
lowing day Parnell took the platform and defied the 
government by a brazen repetition of the offense 
which had led to the proceedings against Davitt. Con- 
fronted now by an aroused nation and despairing of 
securing a jury that would convict, the prosecution of 
the leaguers was dropped—and the agitation con- 
tinued. 

Such was the condition of affairs when the league 
concluded to send Parnell to America to appeal for 
the funds necessary to protect the tenantry and to re- 
sist evictions. It was not a mission that appealed to 
the taste of the Irish leader. He heartily disliked 
speaking and shunned crowds, but with that prescience 
which characterized his leadership he instantly saw the 
immense advantage that must accrue from the cultiva- 
tion of the American people and the consequential con- 
solidation of the Irish race throughout the world in 
the interest of Home Rule. Little did the Land 
League realize perhaps the genius in its conception. 
The spectacular tour of its leader was to lay the 
foundation for that hearty cooperation of the Irish 
exiles which was to contribute so much to the fighting 
equipment of the patriots at home. In his History of 
the Irish Parliamentary Party, F. H. O'Donnell bit- 
terly denounces Parnell for his cultivation of "Ameri- 
can dollars," but it is quite impossible to comprehend 
his scorn in view of the comparative helplessness of 
the Irish party during the last thirty years but for the 
financial assistance of the exiles over seas. During a 
century and more the Irish-Americans had on many 
an occasion sent their dollars to the relief of the fam- 
ine-stricken people at home, but it was left to Parnell 



452 THE IRISH ORATORS 

to make them understand that they were a part of the 
Home-Rule army — a vital part. 

The tour of the leader was a succession of tre- 
mendous ovations — a triumphal journey. Cities con- 
tended for the honor of entertaining him, Senators, 
governors, congressmen, attended him everywhere, 
and immense multitudes, too great to find accommoda- 
tion in the largest halls in the country, poured forth to 
hear his message. The American house of representa- 
tives paid him the rare tribute of inviting him to speak 
to the American people from its rostrum, and then ad- 
journed to attend a reception in his honor at the Wil- 
lard Hotel. An immense concourse of people met him 
when he landed in New York and Parnell took occa- 
sion to explain his mission with a force and earnestness 
which instantly struck a sympathetic chord in the 
American breast. 

"We have to aim against a system which causes dis- 
content and suffering in our country," he said, "and we 
have to endeavor to break down that system. And with 
God's help we are determined to break it down. We are 
also to see that the victims of that system are not suf- 
fered to perish. In the meantime we are to take care 
that the unity and strength of our people are not broken, 
and that now, when the opportunity has really come for 
the settlement of one of the leading questions in Ireland, 
the opportunity may not be lost. The physical suffer- 
ing and misery and starvation of large portions of our 
population in Ireland has not been exaggerated. We 
have been calling upon the government for eight months 
to relieve that distress, but it has only been within the 
last few days that the English government has agreed to 
admit that there is any distress. This was brought to 
their notice by a letter from the Duchess of Marlborough, 
wife of the lord lieutenant, which stated there was going 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 453 

i 

to be a famine and dire distress during the coming win- 
ter. . . . We feel that we can no longer shut our 
eyes to the terrible peril that is approaching, and we 
think that we ought to put the case before our own coun- 
trymen, both at home and here in America, and endeavor 
to enlist sympathy with our efforts. We believe that in 
this country the sympathy accorded will be generous and 
noble despite the efforts of the English press to depre- 
ciate the merits of the American nation." 

The wonderful outpouring of people, the marvelous 
manifestation of enthusiastic sympathy seemed to in- 
spire Parnell in his efforts and the series of speeches 
he delivered, touching with a master hand upon every 
phase of the Irish question that appealed to the Irish- 
Americans, left an indelible impression upon the 
American mind — an impression that persists. 

At Cleveland he did not fail to hold forth a vague 
hope for the Fenian fighters when he said : 

"It has given me great pleasure during my visit to the 
cities of this country to see the armed regiments of 
Irishmen who have frequently turned out to escort us ; 
and when I saw some of these gallant men to-day, who 
are even now in this hall, I thought that each one of them 
must wish, with Sarsfield of old, when dying upon a 
foreign battlefield — 'Oh, that I could carry these arms 
for Ireland/ Well, it may come to that some day or 
other." 

It was at St. Louis that he reached the heights of 
his eloquence : 

"No, we will stand by our country, whether we are 
exterminated by famine to-day, or discriminated by Eng- 
lish bayonets to-morrow, the people of Ireland are de- 
termined to uphold the God-given right of Ireland — to 
take her place among the nations of the world. Our 



454 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tenantry are engaged in a struggle of life and death 
with the Irish landlords. It is no use to attempt to con- 
ceal the issues which have been made there. The land- 
lords say that there is not room for both tenants and 
landlords, and that the people must go, and the people 
have said that the landlords must go." 

And then the orator proceeded to foreshadow his 
marvelous fight against coercion when he said : 

"Now the cable announces to us to-day that the gov- 
ernment is about to attempt to renew the famous Irish 
coercion acts which expired this year. Let me explain 
to you what these coercion acts are. Under them the 
lord lieutenant of Ireland is entitled at any time to pro- 
claim in any Irish county, forbidding any inhabitant of 
that county to go outside of his door after dark. No 
man is permitted to carry a gun or to handle arms in 
his house ; and the farmers of Ireland are not even per- 
mitted to shoot at the birds when they eat the seed corn 
on their freshly sowed land. Under these acts it is also 
possible for the lord lieutenant of Ireland to have any 
man arrested and consigned to prison without charge, 
and without bringing him to trial ; to keep him in prison 
as long as he pleases ; and circumstances have been known 
where the government has arrested prisoners under these 
coercion acts, and has kept them in solitary confinement 
for two years and not allowed them to see a single rela- 
tive or* to communicate with a friend during all that pe- 
riod, and has finally forgotten the existence of the help- 
less prisoners. And this is the infamous code which 
England is seeking to reenact. I tell you, when I read 
this despatch, strongly impressed as I am with the mag- 
nitude and vast importance of the work in which we are 
engaged in this country, that I feel strongly tempted to 
hurry back to Westminster in order to show this Eng- 
lish government whether it shall dare, in this year 1880, 
to renew this odious code with as much facility as it has 
done in former years." 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 4SS 

In a series of such speeches Parnell aroused a 
greater interest in Irish affairs on the part of the 
American people than had ever before been felt in his- 
tory, and one stormy March day as he stood, bare- 
headed on the bridge of the outgoing ship, the rain 
beating down upon him, as he gravely saluted the gal- 
lant Sixty-ninth Regiment which had gathered to see 
him off, he had the best of evidence of the success of 
his mission in the two hundred thousand dollars that 
he was carrying back to Ireland to use in the fight for 
the tenants. 

He had consolidated the Irish at home ; he had or- 
ganized the Irish in England to the point where they 
had become a vital factor in the political life of the 
country; and now he was going home with the con- 
sciousness that he had enrolled the Irish- Americans in 
the battle of Home Rule. 

Hardly had he landed in Ireland when a political 
crisis was precipitated by the dissolution of the gov- 
ernment, and he was immediately plunged into a gen- 
eral election. To the English end of the contest Par- 
nell paid but little heed. In English leaders he had 
but little confidence. It was with Irish constituencies 
that he was primarily concerned, and he threw himself 
into the fight in Ireland with a passionate intensity 
that set the island ablaze. He was a veritable demon 
in battle. Day and night, without rest, without sleep, 
he devoted himself to bringing out candidates, super- 
intending the details of the campaign, addressing im- 
mense crowds as at Cork where he aroused an audience 
of thirty thousand, speaking in villages and hamlets. 
The man who disliked speaking developed Napoleonic 
qualities of speech. "Citizens of Cork," he said, the 



456 THE IRISH ORATORS 



night before the election as he faced an immense 
throng assembled under his windows at the hotel: 
"This is the night before the battle. To your guns 
then." And they responded. When the smoke lifted 
it was found that the liberals under Gladstone had 
swept England, and that in Ireland out of the one hun- 
dred and five seats Parnell had captured sixty. We 
shall now behold him, the head of a strongly organized 
and thoroughly consolidated army, opening fire upon 
the oppressors across the channel all along the line. 

IV 

W r hen the liberals went into power with the aid of 
the Irish and Gladstone became prime minister, Par- 
nell and his following took seats with the opposition, 
thus emphasizing his point that while his party would, 
from time to time, effect a temporary working .ar- 
rangement with another party, it would necessarily 
remain in opposition to the government until the Irish 
wrongs had been completely righted. Notwithstand- 
ing the agrarian disturbances and the activity of the 
Land League the queen's speech did not mention the 
land question in Ireland as among the topics to receive 
the consideration of the government. It now appears 
that Gladstone, who resembled practically all English 
statesmen in this regard, was really ignorant of condi- 
tions in Ireland and had assumed that the miserably 
inadequate Land Act of 1870 had settled the land 
problem for all time to come. 

Upon this point Parnell quickly disillusioned him. 
Almost immediately he brought in a bill to stay evic- 
tions and to award compensation in the event of any 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELU 457 

'disturbances. This measure went beyond the possi- 
bility of governmental concession at that time, but 
Forster, the chief secretary, frankly confessed that he 
was not prepared to reject the principle, and a little 
later he brought in his own "Compensation for Dis- 
turbance" bill, which provided that the evicted tenant 
should be entitled to compensation when he had 
proved to the satisfaction of the court his inability to 
pay, the fact that such inability grew out of bad har- 
vests, and that he had expressed his willingness to con- 
tinue his tenancy on just and reasonable terms which 
had been rejected by the landlord. This measure, 
which was a step in the right direction, failed to obtain 
the unanimous support of the liberal party, 'but it 
easily passed second reading by a vote of 295 to 217. 
After the bill had been greatly weakened by conces- 
sions to the landlords, it passed on third reading and 
went to the house of lords where it was promptly re- 
jected with every manifestation of contempt. 

The defeat of this measure was the signal for the 
beginning of the war. It was now evident that noth- 
ing could be expected from the government to relieve 
the situation in Ireland. The agitation in that un- 
happy island increased a hundredfold. Every eviction 
was attended by a riot. The tenant who had dared to 
take a place from which another had been evicted was 
assaulted and his property destroyed. It was under 
these conditions that Parnell decided to declare war 
upon the ministry he had helped to place in power. 
He entertained not a scintilla of faith in its sincerity. 
He realized that nothing further could be accomplished 
by discussion or agitation in the house of commons, 
and he hurried back to Ireland to urge upon the ten- 



458 THE IRISH ORATORS 

ants the revolutionary necessity of protecting them- 
selves — and that could only mean by force of one kind 
or another. In the despair of the tenants he saw the 
opportunity to make the Land League as strong a 
power as the Catholic Association of O'Connell — and 
he made it stronger. 

Thus it was that one day, in late September, Parnell 
stood up before an immense throng at Ennis, and, in 
a speech, cold, concise and deliberative, threw down 
the gauntlet in such a manner as to make a profound 
impression upon the country. 

"Depend upon it that the measure of the Land bill next 
session will be the measure of your activity and energy 
this winter," he said. "It will be the measure of your 
determination not to pay unjust rents; it will be the 
measure of your determination to keep a firm grip on 
your homesteads. It will be the measure of your de- 
termination not to bid for farms from which others have 
been evicted, and to use the strong force of public opin- 
ion to deter any unjust man amongst yourselves — and 
there are many such — from bidding for such farms. 
Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a 
farm from which his neighbor has been evicted?" 
(Much excitement and cries of "Shoot him.") 
"Now, I think I heard some one say, 'Shoot him/ " 
Parnell continued softly, entirely unmoved. "I wish to 
point out to you a much better way — a more Christian 
and a more charitable way — which will give the lost sin- 
ner an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a 
farm from which another has been evicted, you must 
show him on the roadside when you meet him, you must 
show him in the streets of the town, you must show 
him at the shop counter, you must show him at the fair 
and in the market place, and even in the house of worship, 
by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a 
moral Coventry, by isolating him from his kind as if 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 450 

he were a leper of old — you must show him your de- 
testation of the crime he has committed, and you may de- 
pend upon it that there will be no man so full of avarice, 
so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all 
right thinking men and to transgress your unwritten code 
of laws." 

Not so eloquent perhaps as other famous speeches, 
but few have been so historic or effective, for this 
speech at Ennis brought the boycott into action for the 
first time. The tremendous import of the new propo- 
sition was not lost upon the governmental authorities. 
In England it was looked upon as scarcely less than 
anarchy. In Ireland it aroused the most intense en- 
thusiasm. It delighted the Fenians and it won the 
farmers. And after he had won the farmers through 
the propaganda of the Land League he hastened to 
impress upon their minds the essential connection be- 
tween land reform and the restoration of the legisla- 
tive independence of the country. Thus did he give 
expression to his marvelous political sagacity. The 
Land League was not his creature. It was forced upon 
him. And just at the juncture where it threatened to 
supplant the Home-Rule movement he stepped in and 
took the leadership to the end that he might lead the 
league, and with it all the farmers who had hitherto 
held back from the political movement, into the Home- 
Rule camp. 

This done, the league grew with phenomenal rapid- 
ity both in numbers and in power. It had touched the 
sympathy of the American people, and largely through 
the enthusiastic cooperation of Patrick Ford, the bril- 
liant and militant editor of The Irish World of New 
York, thousands of dollars — American dollars, so 



460 THE IRISH ORATORS 

much despised by Mr. O'Donnell — poured into the 
coffers of the organization. The league soon over- 
shadowed the power of the Castle. The masses of the 
people accepted its dictum as law. Its orders were 
obeyed. The suggestions of its leaders were adopted. 
It took on the dignity of a provisional government. 
And meanwhile the misery of the people increased. 
Nowhere in all of Europe — not even in the most pov- 
erty-stricken parts of Europe — was there such suffer- 
ing. Thousands unable to pay their rent were brutally 
thrown out upon the highway to starve. Women who 
were sick were carried out into the road upon their 
cots and left exposed to the elements. Outrages in- 
numerable were committed in retaliation. Bands of 
desperate tenants scoured the country carrying the 
torch of the incendiary from house to house. 

The battle was on in earnest — it was the govern- 
ment versus the Land League, and Gladstone, in a fury 
at his own impotency, determined to suppress the pow- 
erful organization which had reduced his Irish gov- 
ernment to a shadow. Lord Cowper, the lord lieuten- 
ant, was in the Castle — but Parnell was king! After 
his favorite fashion the Irish leader was skilfully 
skirting sedition — but he kept within the law. The 
government feared him, hated him, thought him capa- 
ble of going any length, but it could fix no specific 
crime upon him. He went his way. He did not march 
with the incendiaries — but he set Ireland on fire. 

And the government? 

It was a house divided against itself. The officials 
in Ireland urged the suspension of the writ of habeas 
corpus — another favorite Irish remedy — but the min- 
istry drew back and urged the exhausting of all the 




Michael Davitt 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 461 

ordinary remedies and the prosecution of the leaders 
of the league. The problem was no longer the ame- 
lioration of the conditions of the starving tenantry, but 
the discovery of incendiarism in the speeches of Par- 
nell and Davitt and their followers. The government 
was too intent on watching these gentlemen to pay any 
heed to the starving children, evicted to perish like 
beasts upon the highway. The letters that were ex- 
changed at this time between Lord Cowper and the 
ministry throw a pitiful light upon the miserable pol- 
icy of the period — complaints of the lawful nature of 
the speeches, of the sympathy of the people with the 
lawbreakers, of the bitterness manifested against the 
landlords, of the increasing power of the league. 

And then the government struck ! 

Early in November Parnell and his lieutenants were 
arrested on the charge of conspiracy to prevent the 
payment of rent, to resist evictions and to prevent the 
taking of farms from which a tenant had been evicted. 
When served with the papers Parnell merely smiled 
— his cold slow smile. It was as silly as the arrest- 
ing of a soldier in the midst of the sacking of a con- 
quered city. A few days after the arrest the Irish 
leader, speaking to a multitude in Dublin, took occa- 
sion to express his open contempt for the proceedings 
of the court. He was hailed as a hero everywhere. 
The city of Limerick presented him with the freedom 
of the city. And then came the trial — a long-drawn 
legal battle full of sound and fury signifying nothing 
— and then the failure of the prosecution. Walking 
like a conqueror from the court room, he was given an 
ovation by the thousands in the streets, who shouted 
lustily, "Long live the chief." That night bonfires 



462 THE IRISH ORATORS 

were blazing on all the hilltops. The ordinary proc- 
esses of the law had failed. 

What next? 

The inevitable thing under such governmental con- 
ditions — the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus 
— coercion, a governmental reign of terror, a rever- 
sion to first principles. The fight of Parnell now 
shifted back to Westminster, where he made one of 
the most remarkable and picturesque fights against the 
Forster Coercion bill that has ever been witnessed in 
the English parliament. With marvelous dexterity, 
untiring, determined, he interposed between the gov- 
ernment and the passage of the bill every parliamen- 
tary device known to man. Every possible scheme of 
obstruction was brought into play. The Irish party slept 
upon their arms — rather, they slept not at all. At length, 
worn to a frazzle, desperate in its impotency, the gov- 
ernment, finding itself unable to defeat the little strag- 
gling army of Parnell through recognized parliamen- 
tary methods, put an end to the struggle after eleven 
days by mobbing the parliament. Force in Ireland — ■ 
force in parliament — why not ? The Coercion bill was 
passed and the lord lieutenant was authorized to ar- 
rest any persons he reasonably suspected and, without 
trial, to throw them into prison and hold them there 
for any period up to September thirtieth, 1882. This 
was in the England of the latter days of the nineteenth 
century ! 

The merry work immediately began in Ireland and 
hundreds were swept into prison — but the fight went 
on, the agitators thundered from the platforms, the 
island seethed with infuriated tenants, and nothing 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 463 

was accomplished except to demonstrate the futility 
of the attempt to subdue the country. And then Glad- 
stone saw the light. 

The prime minister now understood that the Land 
Act of 1870 did not amount to the paper it was writ- 
ten on as far as satisfying the people and meeting the 
situation went. He realized, as the prisons filled with- 
out the abatement of the agitation, that coercion with- 
out remedial legislation would not avail. He awoke 
to a realization of his duty. The Land League, as he 
admitted twenty years later, tore the scales from his 
eyes and he beheld Ireland for the first time. In April, 
1881, he amazed the country by bringing in a measure 
of land reform so sweeping in its nature as to amount 
to revolution. It practically swept away the power 
of the landlords. In a large degree it met the Irish 
demands. 

And Parnell — how did he meet the concession ? 

The Gladstone conversion brought Parnell face to 
face with one of the most critical moments of his 
career, where a false step would have meant ultimate 
ruination, and the natural step would have been the 
false one. To have eagerly accepted the bill would 
have weakened him in his greater fight for Home Rule 
and would have hopelessly compromised him with the 
Fenian element of his following and with his Amer- 
ican supporters, lo have rejected it utterly would 
have been worse than criminal. Some of the members 
of the Irish party spoke in favor of the measure. The 
enemies of Parnell began to whisper it about that he, 
too, would gladly accept it. No one, not even his own 
party, knew precisely what Parnell would do, but his 



464 THE IRISH ORATORS 

followers assumed, of course, that he would give it 
a tacit support. As the time for the second reading 
approached Parnell called a conference of the Irish 
party to determine upon its attitude toward the bill. 
The members were all present and in their seats when 
the leader reached the conference room, and in his 
characteristically cold and mystic manner walked to 
the front of the room and took the chair. 

"Gentlemen," he began, "I don't know what your view 
of this question is. I am against voting on the second 
reading of the bill. We have not considered it carefully. 
We must not make ourselves responsible for it. Of 
course, I do not want to force my views upon anybody, 
but I feel so strongly upon the subject that if a majority 
of the party differ from me I shall resign at once." 

Thus Parnell had his way, the party harmony was 
preserved, the Fenians were satisfied and the Home 
Rulers scored a triumph without compromising the 
greater cause. When the bill passed on second reading 
Parnell and thirty-five of his followers walked out — 
refusing to vote. Whenever the bill or any part of 
it was in danger Parnell threw his thirty-five into the 
balance and saved the day. When the final vote was 
taken he walked out — but the bill passed. This meas- 
ure took from the landlords the power to increase rents 
arbitrarily, established tribunals for the fixing of rents 
and multiplied the facilities for creating a peasant pro- 
prietary. It was the first great Irish service ever ren- 
dered by Gladstone. 

It soon developed, however, that Parnell had seen 
clearer and further than his followers, for the accept- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 465 

ance of the Land act, even in the manner and to the 
degree in which it was accepted by the Irish party, 
created the utmost distrust in America and aroused the 
indignation of Patrick Ford, whose services to the par- 
liamentary party were of inestimable value. This de- 
fection determined the course of Parnell — he proposed 
that his party should give public evidence of its suspi- 
cions of the law, and this was done by advising the 
tenants not to rush precipitately into the law courts 
with their rent difficulties. In September, 1881, the 
Land League, in convention assembled in Dublin, took 
the new Land act under consideration, and Parnell 
proposed that instead of permitting the tenants to rush 
indiscriminately into the courts the league should se- 
lect certain cases for test purposes. This, according 
to O'Brien, was done to conciliate Ford. By selecting 
cases other than those notoriously cruel the idea was 
held out to the editor of The Irish World that the de- 
termination of these test cases would sufficiently dem- 
onstrate the shallowness of the measure. 

This plan of campaign, which was adopted by the 
league, led to the most bitter and extravagant attacks 
upon Parnell by the English papers of every political 
persuasion — which was precisely what Parnell wanted. 
The semi-acceptance of the law by the Irish party had 
rather tended to weaken Parnell with the radicals ; the 
English denunciations of the leader drew them back. 
It was left to Gladstone to add anything that the Eng- 
lish press had omitted, and in a speech at Leeds the 
prime minister denounced the Irish leader with a bit- 
terness seldom . expressed by that great statesman. 
This, too, was playing into the hands of Parnell, and 



466 THE IRISH ORATORS 

be hastened to follow up his advantage with a counter- 
attack or reply delivered at Wexford on October ninth, 
1881. In this speech he said : 

"You have gained something for your exertions during 
the last twelve months ; but I am here to-day to tell you 
that you have gained but a fraction of that to which you 
are entitled. And the Irishman who thinks that he can 
now throw away his arms, just as Grattan disbanded the 
Irish Volunteers in 1782, will find to his sorrow and de- 
struction when too late that he has placed himself in 
the power of the perfidious and cruel and relentless Eng- 
lish enemy. . . . It is a good sign that the masquer- 
ading knight (Gladstone), this pretending champion of 
the rights of every other nation, should be obliged to 
throw off the mask to-day and stand revealed as the man 
who, by his own utterances, is prepared to carry fire and 
sword into your homesteads unless you humbly abase 
yourselves before him and before the landlords of the 
country. But I have forgotten. I said that he maligned 
everybody. Oh, no. He has a good word for one or 
two people. He says that the late Isaac Butt was a most 
estimable man and a true patriot. When we in Ireland 
were following Isaac Butt into the lobbies endeavoring 
to obtain the very act which William Ewart Gladstone, 
having stolen the idea from Isaac Butt, passed last ses- 
sion, William Ewart Gladstone and his ex-government 
officials were following Sir Starafford Northcote and 
Benjamin Disraeli into the other lobby. No man is great 
in Ireland until he is dead and unable to do anything 
more for his country. In the opinion of an English 
statesman no man is good in Ireland until he is dead and 
buried and unable to strike a blow for Ireland. Per- 
haps the day may come when I may get a good word 
from an English statesman as being a moderate man, 
after I am dead and buried. When people talk of pub- 
lic plunder they should ask themselves who were the first 
plunderers in Ireland. The land of Ireland has been con- 
fiscated three times over by the men whose descendants 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 467 

Mr. Gladstone is supporting in the enjoyment of the 
fruits of their plunder by his bayonets and his buckshot. 
And when we are spoken to about plunder we are en- 
titled to ask who were the first and biggest plunderers. 
This doctrine of public plunder is only a question of 
degree. 

"In one last despairing wail Mr. Gladstone says, 'And 
the government is expected to preserve peace with no 
moral force behind it.' The government has no moral 
force behind them in Ireland; the whole Irish people 
are against them. They have to depend for their sup- 
port upon a self-interested and a very small minority of 
the people of the country, and therefore they have no 
moral force behind them, and Mr. Gladstone, in those 
few short words, admits that English government has 
failed in Ireland. 

"He admits the contention that Grattan and the Vol- 
unteers of 1782 fought for ; he admits the contention that 
the men of '98 died for; he admits the contention that 
O'Connell argued for ; he admits the contention that the 
men of '48 staked their all for ; he admits the contention 
that the men of '67, after a long period of depression 
and apparent death of national life in Ireland, cheer- 
fully faced the dungeons and the horrors of penal servi- 
tude for; and he admits the contention that to-day you, 
in your overpowering multitudes, have established and, 
please God, will bring to a successful issue — namely, that 
England's mission in Ireland has been a failure, and that 
Irishmen have established their right to govern Ireland 
by laws made by themselves on Irish soil. I say it is not 
within Mr. Gladstone's power to trample on the aspira- 
tions and rights of the Irish nation with no moral force 
behind him. ... These are very brave words that 
he uses, but it strikes me that they have a ring about 
them like the whistle of a schoolboy on his way through 
a churchyard at night — to keep up his courage. He 
would have you believe that he is not afraid of you 
because he has disarmed you, because he has attempted 
to disorganize you, because he knows that the Irish na- 



468 THE IRISH ORATORS 

tion is to-day disarmed as far as physical weapons are 
concerned. But he does not hold this kind of language 
with the Boers. At the beginning of this session he said 
something of this kind about the Boers. He said that 
he was going to put them down, and as soon as he dis- 
covered that they were able to shoot straighter than his 
own soldiers he allowed these few men to put him and 
his government down. I trust as a result of this great 
movement we shall see that, just as Gladstone by the act 
of 1881 has eaten all his own words, has departed from 
all his formerly declared principles, now we shall see 
that these brave words of the English prime minister 
will be scattered like chaff before the united and ad- 
vancing determination of the Irish people to regain for 
themselves their lost land and their legislative inde- 
pendence." 

It was inevitable that such a speech, following close 
upon that of the prime minister and making the issue 
plain between the government and Parnell as to which 
of the two should dominate Ireland, should have a tre- 
mendous effect. It was a defiance and a challenge to 
battle. It had to be accepted or the government was 
lost. It made it almost a matter of political necessity 
for the government to proceed against the Irish leader 
■ — and this Parnell knew, upon this he had thought. 
It was in the days when threatening letters were be- 
ing sent to landlords in Ireland signed "Captain Moon- 
light." On the evening of the delivery of his Wex- 
ford speech Parnell and some of his followers dined 
together and the followers, fearing and more than half 
expecting that Parnell's arrest would follow, turned to 
him with a question : 

"Suppose they arrest you, Mr. Parnell; have you 
any instructions to give us? Who will take your 
place?" 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 469 

The leader was in the act of lifting a glass of wine 
to his lips. Before replying he held the wine between 
himself and the light as though enjoying the color 
and then, just as he was about to place it to his lips, 
he answered with a smile: 

i "Ah, if I am arrested 'Captain Moonlight' will take 
my place." 

! Three days after the Wexford speech the cabinet 
met in London and determined upon the arrest of Par- 
nell. 

The news of the arrest spread rapidly. In England 
it is said to have been received with the same show of 
enthusiasm with which the report of an English mili- 
tary victory might have been acclaimed. In Ireland 
the country went temporarily mad. The shops were 
closed in towns and villages as for a funeral. In the 
city of Dublin there was much rioting and the police 
were forced to club the disturbers into submission. In 
England Parnell was hated as no man has been hated 
before or since. In Ireland he became an idol. The 
Irish fight instantly fell into the hands of the extrem- 
ists. The strong restraining hand was withdrawn. 
The reign of terror followed. And Parnell was suc- 
ceeded by Captain Moonlight ! 

V 

While England's distinguished prisoner, comfort- 
ably situated in Kilmainham, was regaling himself with 
chess the conditions in Ireland, no longer chargeable 
to him, grew rapidly worse. The most frightful out- 
rages were committed, increasing in number and enor- 
mity. The country was bordering on a state of an- 
archy. The officials of the Castle were helpless to 



470 THE IRISH ORATORS 

combat crime. In sheer desperation Lord Cowper and 
Forster urgently advocated the passage of more strin- 
gent laws, only to find that the government in England 
was meditating compromise with its arch-enemy in 
Kilmainham prison. 

The situation was unique in that both Gladstone and 
Parnell, but recently at each other's throats, found 
it to their mutual interest to negotiate some sort of a 
treaty of peace. The Irish leader noted with alarm 
the rapidity with which the organized opposition to 
English rule was degenerating into a state of futile 
anarchy, and was anxious to get out for the purpose 
of stemming the tide of lawlessness and restraining the 
extremists. The English prime minister noticed that 
the withdrawal of Parnell from active domination of 
the land movement had resulted in all but converting 
a constitutional agitation into an incendiary rebellion 
impossible to subdue without the shedding of much 
blood and the further embittering of the Irish people. 
Parnell needed Gladstone to get out; Gladstone needed 
Parnell to slow up the land movement. Thus the sit- 
uation was auspicious for negotiations. Within a 
short time these negotiations were in progress through 
the offices of Chamberlain, Captain O'Shea and Justin 
McCarthy. The result was an understanding, if not 
a compact, as has been denied, to the effect that the 
government agreed to pass an Arrears act to provide 
for such of the tenants as were unable to pay their 
rent, and Parnell agreed to slow up the agitation which 
had become a nightmare to the ministry. With this 
distinct understanding, treaty, compact or what not, 
Parnell walked out of Kilmainham prison — a free 
man. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 471 

In entering into this agreement Parnell accomplished 
more, perhaps, than Gladstone anticipated — he divided 
the English opposition or government against itself. 
Forster and Cowper, feeling themselves repudiated 
through the treaty with their arch-enemy, instantly re- 
signed and the former, in explaining his resignation 
to the house of commons, hinted rather broadly at a 
bargain between the prime minister and Parnell — then 
an unpardonable offense according to English ethics. 
It was while Forster was on his feet and in the midst 
of his denunciation of Parnell that the Irish leader 
entered the house, fresh from Kilmainham. He was 
accorded a magnificent ovation, the enthusiasm being 
shared by a large portion of the English members. It 
was a happy hour for the leader of the Irish party. 
The policy through which England had long ruled Ire- 
land was by dividing the Irish against themselves. The 
situation was now reversed. When Forster sat down 
Gladstone rose to defend the action of Parnell and 
himself — and the remarkable spectacle was presented 
of an English prime minister defending an Irish leader 
against the attack of a leading member of his own 
party. At the conclusion of Gladstone's speech Par- 
nell, cold, calm, dignified, concise, made a brief speech 
to the effect that in the event of the passage of an Ar- 
rears act his people would effect material changes in 
the lamentable conditions in Ireland. 

But alas! there was always a Nemesis on the trail 
of Charles Stewart Parnell and it always struck on 
the eve of a great triumph! 

Hardly had the scene just described been enacted 
in the house of commons when a tragedy that sent a 
thrill of horror through the civilized world was en- 



472 THE IRISH ORATORS 

acted in Dublin. The government had sent Earl Spen- 
cer to Ireland as lord lieutenant to succeed Cowper, 
and the popular Lord Cavendish was sent as chief sec- 
retary to succeed the impossible Forster. Both offi- 
cials were exceedingly popular and both were men of 
unusually liberal leanings. This was especially true 
of Lord Cavendish, who was looked upon as an ex- 
ceptionally sympathetic critic of Irish affairs. Among 
the leaders of the Irish party he was as popular as it 
was possible for an English official to be. On the very 
day the new officials made their state entrance into 
Dublin Lord Cavendish, while walking in company 
with Burke, an under-secretary, through Phoenix 
Park, was set upon by a number of ruffians and mur- 
dered. 

The crime sent a thrill of horror all over the world. 
Great as was the indignation in England, it could not 
have been so great as in Ireland, which was destined 
to pay the penalty of the crime. The news of the 
crime converted Parnell, the cold, calm and collected 
man, into a madman for a moment. The blow fell 
upon him with crushing effect. For a moment he 
completely lost his customary composure, and like a 
wild man he rushed to the Westminster Palace hotel 
and into the room of Davitt, where he threw himself 
into a chair with the declaration of his determination 
to retire immediately from public life. "How can I 
carry on a public agitation if I am to be stabbed in 
the back in this way?" he exclaimed in a voice broken 
with emotion. Notwithstanding the earnest efforts of 
his friends to dissuade him, he sat down and penned 
a note to Gladstone which was delivered to the prime 
minister at the breakfast table, asking his advice as 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 473 

to the propriety of his withdrawal from public af- 
fairs. 

It is to the infinite credit of the prime minister that 
he strongly advised against such a course on the 
ground that such action would do more harm than 
good. Upon the receipt of Gladstone's reply Parnell 
prepared a manifesto which was signed by Dillon, 
Davitt and himself on behalf of the Irish party, bit- 
terly denouncing the crime; and when the house met 
Parnell, pale and careworn like a sick man, rose in 
his place and in the midst of an ominous and signifi- 
cant silence condemned the crime and declared it to 
be a deadly blow at the Irish party. 

This miserable crime broke in sadly upon the peace- 
ful plans contemplated in the treaty of Kilmainham. 
It made almost inevitable a recurrence to coercion in 
Ireland and, while Parnell fought the proposition, he 
fought hopelessly handicapped under the weight of the 
Phoenix Park murders. Indeed, his biographer tells 
us that he scarcely blamed Gladstone for his course. 
It must be recorded, however, to the very great honor 
of the prime minister, that he proceeded without delay 
in carrying out his part of the Kilmainham agreement, 
and an Arrears bill was presented in practically the 
identical form in which Parnell had conceived it. This 
bill provided that the tenant should pay the rent for 
the year 1881 and that that of arrears should be paid 
jointly by tenant and government, provided the tenant 
should be able to satisfy a legal tribunal of his inability 
to pay the whole. This bill was immediately enacted 
and Gladstone's part of the program was completed. 
Parnell exerted all the influence he possessed to live 
up to his part of the plan, and while he did succeed 
in slowing down the agitation, the reversion of the 



474 THE IRISH ORATORS 

government to coercive measures in Ireland placed him 
at a painful disadvantage. 

The one impressive feature of this period, however, 
is the fact that he walked out of Kilmainham prison 
with an Irish concession in his hand. 

VI 

It soon developed that the understanding between 
Parnell and Gladstone was a gentleman's agreement 
rather than an alliance. True to his policy the Irish 
leader accepted the Arrears act as a concession to 
necessity and of comparatively small moment, and al- 
most immediately he renewed his activities with in- 
creased earnestness. That his hatred and contempt for 
England had not abated one whit was manifested in 
a striking episode in the house of commons about this 
time. The one man who never forgave Parnell for 
his treaty with Gladstone was Forster, and we shall 
find him from time to time recurring to his attacks 
upon the Irish leader — attacks that were virulent, vi- 
cious, unscrupulous, dishonest. The Phoenix Park 
murders gave him an early opportunity to resume his 
fight on Parnell, and in a bitter attack upon the char- 
acter of his enemy he attempted to trace all the crimes 
that had been committed in Ireland to his door. Dur- 
ing the delivery of the speech, which was inflammatory 
and provocative, Parnell sat calmly facing Forster with 
an expression of scorn which sometimes took the form 
of a sneer upon his pale face. Only once did he mani- 
fest the slightest feeling. 

"It is not that he himself directly planned or per- 
petrated outrages," said Forster, "but that he either 
connived at them or when warned — " 






CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 475 

"It is a lie," shouted Parnell. 

That was all. The Irish leader was instantly a mask 
again — cold, imperturbable, scornful. It was the ex- 
pectation that Parnell would reply the moment Forster 
resumed his seat. This idea, however, does not ap- 
pear to have entered into Parnell' s plans. He made 
no motion to rise. His friends, astonished, gathered 
about him, urging him to defend himself, but he re- 
fused until the importunities of his lieutenants became 
so insistent that he agreed. On the day announced 
for the reply the house was packed. Among the celeb- 
rities in the galleries was the Prince of Wales. Par- 
nell sat cold and calm and indifferent among his fol- 
lowers, apparently oblivious to the tenseness of the 
feeling of the house. At length he rose, and his first 
sentence was an expression of profound contempt for 
the public opinion of England : 

"I have been accustomed during my political life," he 
began, "to rely upon the opinion of those whom I have 
desired to help, and with whose aid I have worked for 
the cause of prosperity and freedom in Ireland, and the 
utmost I desire to do in the very few words I shall ad- 
dress to the house is to make my position clear to the 
Irish people at home and abroad." 

In the words that followed he treated Forster with 
open contempt, and did not so much as notice the vi- 
cious charges the former secretary had made against 
him. This had the effect of arousing the utmost in- 
dignation in England and of awakening the liveliest 
enthusiasm among the Irish people, who gloried in a 
leader who had the audacity to stand in the English 
house of commons and publicly declare that the good 



476 THE IRISH ORATORS 

opinion of the English people was not worth the cul- 
tivation. 

Meanwhile the conditions in Ireland had not im- 
proved under Earl Spencer, owing in part, perhaps, 
to the return to coercion which followed the Phcenix 
Park murders, and the country was saturated with se- 
dition. The lord lieutenant himself had become so un- 
popular with the masses that he only ventured into the 
streets under the protection of an armed escort. The 
antipathy of the Irish people to Gladstone was so pro- 
nounced that his appointee in Dublin was greeted with 
cries of "Down with Gladstone" as he rode through 
the city. With his ringer then as always on the public 
pulse, Parnell foresaw that the prime minister was 
doomed, and he determined to hasten his downfall and 
precipitate a general election. This anxiety to try con- 
clusions at the polls was born of the conviction that 
the newly established household suffrage which in- 
creased the voting strength of Ireland by half a mil- 
lion votes would insure the Irish party a following 
of from eighty to ninety members who would hold the 
balance of power as between the English parties. 

As a preliminary step Parnell was quietly studying 
the political chessboard and fixing his estimates of 
men. It appears that at this period he was particularly 
interested in three of the English leaders. Of the 
three he was partial personally to Lord Randolph 
Churchill. It is hardly probable that Parnell ever 
really loved any Englishman, but it is said that he 
entertained a kindlier feeling for the brilliant young 
Tory leader than for any other man in public life. 
The clever orator and game fighter appealed to him 
strongly and he loved to lounge in the smoking room 
with Lord Randolph to enjoy his witticisms and quaint 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 477 

biting characterizations. He felt, too, that Churchill's 
generous and liberal nature and friendly attitude to- 
ward the Irish people gave promise of future services. 
As to his attitude toward Home Rule he knew little 
or nothing, but he looked upon the Tory iconoclast 
as the most likely of the English statesmen to subscribe 
to an independent parliament for Ireland. He doubted 
his capacity to carry the Tory party with him even 
in the event of his conversion to the cause, but he 
felt that Lord Randolph with his marvelous resource- 
fulness could at least create enough sentiment within 
that party to give serious concern to the liberals. 

Another English statesman who was under Parnell's 
observation at this time was Joe Chamberlain, the er- 
ratic and brilliant young liberal for whom he enter- 
tained that liking which is born of admiration. His 
analysis of Chamberlain's predilections led him to the 
conclusion that the member for Birmingham would 
concede everything to Ireland short of Home Rule, 
and for that reason he decided to cultivate friendly 
relations with him while holding him at a distance. 

The third of the trio, of course, was Gladstone. It 
appears on the evidence of his contemporaries that 
Parnell entertained a secret dislike for the liberal 
leader, but that he was thoroughly appreciative of his 
majestic genius. O'Brien in his biography says that 
"man for man he would rather have had Gladstone on 
his side than any man in England." He likewise felt 
that Gladstone would carry more strength in Ireland 
than any of the other English politicians. 

And now for Parnell's game — what was it? 

Parnell knew, of course, that the three politicians 
mentioned were all hungry for office and for power, 



478 THE IRISH ORATORS 

and he proposed to muster sufficient numerical strength 
in the Irish party to make it impossible for any of 
them to reach power without dealing directly with him. 
According to O'Brien, his plan was to threaten Cham- 
berlain with Churchill and both with Gladstone by 
making it clear that his strength would go to the one 
who promised the most to Ireland. As a preliminary 
he proposed to give a practical demonstration of his 
power by driving Gladstone from office and compelling 
a general election. In the meanwhile he had an un- 
derstanding with Lord Randolph Churchill — an under- 
standing which has been subjected to many interpre- 
tations. In his brilliant biography of his father, 
Winston Churchill rather appears to resent the idea 
that there was anything like a compact between him 
and the Irish leader, but Lord Rosebery, in his clever 
monograph on Lord Randolph, is equally convinced 
that there was a distinct understanding. It seems rea- 
sonable to assume that Parnell did know that in the 
event the liberals should be thrown out and the Tories 
returned to office there would be no renewal of the 
Crimes act in the event Churchill made one of the 
new government — an event that was practically in- 
evitable. 

Thus did Parnell lay his plans. The opportunity 
for their consummation came about the middle of May, 
1885, when Gladstone announced his determination to 
renew the Crimes act. The bill was to be presented 
on June tenth. The Irish leader carefully waited for 
an auspicious opportunity to spring upon the govern- 
ment, and this was presented on June eighth on the 
second reading of the budget. An amendment was 
offered by a Tory leader condemning the proposed in- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 479 

crease of the duties on beer and spirits; the entire 
strength of the Irish party was thrown by Parnell in 
favor of the amendment, and the government was de- 
feated. The significance of the overthrow of the gov- 
ernment could not have been lost on Gladstone when 
he listened to the lusty shouts of the Irish members, 
"Remember coercion." The first part of Parnell's pro- 
gram had been followed to a successful conclusion. 

Within a month the Tories were in office with Lord 
Salisbury as prime minister, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach 
as chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Churchill as sec- 
retary of state for India and the Earl of Carnarvon 
as lord lieutenant for Ireland. It was not necessary 
for Parnell to remind the Tory government of its ob- 
ligations to the Irish party, for the liberals attended 
to that. John Morley, commenting upon the situation 
at the time, said : "As for the new government, sharp 
critics — and some of the sharpest are to be found on 
their own benches — do not shrink from declaring that 
they come into power as Mr. Parnell's lieutenants. 
His vote has installed, it can displace them; it has its 
price and the price will be paid. In the whole trans- 
action the Irish not only count, they count almost for 
everything." 

Nor were the Tories unmindful of their obligation. 
They refused to renew the Crimes act in Ireland. 
Lord Carnarvon publicly announced his determination 
to rule in Ireland by the ordinary law. When Parnell 
asked for an inquiry into the trials of the Maamtrasna 
murderers and the liberals, interpreting the demand as 
a reflection upon the administration of the Earl Spen- 
cer, set up a cry of protest, the Tories granted the re- 
quest. The Tories became more liberal than the lib- 



480 THE IRISH ORATORS 

erals. All the leaders of the party in power assumed 
the most cordial attitude toward Parnell and this was 
especially true of Lord Churchill, who was probably 
the most sincere of the lot. Taking advantage of his 
brief summer, Parnell demanded a new Land bill and 
one was promptly passed empowering the state to ad- 
vance a part or the whole of the purchase money to 
tenants who had agreed with their landlords to buy 
their holdings and allowing forty-nine years for re- 
payment at four per cent, interest. 

Then came the famous Carnarvon incident on the 
eve of the elections. 

In the elections which followed the dissolution of 
parliament Parnell entered the campaign with but one 
plank in his platform, and that declaring for Home 
Rule. He delivered his keynote at a meeting in Dub- 
lin in the latter part of August when he said : 

"I say that each and all of us have only looked upon 
the acts — the legislative enactments which we have been 
able to wring from an unwilling parliament — as means 
toward an end ; that we would have at any time, in the 
hours of our deepest depression and greatest discourage- 
ment, spurned and rejected any measure, however tempt- 
ing and however apparently for the benefit of our peo- 
ple, if we had been able to detect that behind it lurked 
any danger to the legislative independence of our land. 
. . . It is admitted by all parties that you have brought 
the question of Irish legislative independence to the point 
of solution. It is not now a question of self-government 
for Ireland; it is only a question as to how much of 
self-government they will be able to cheat us out of. It 
is not now a question as to whether the Irish people 
shall decide their own destinies and their own future, 
but it is a question with — I was going to say our English 
masters, but we can not call them masters in Ireland-^ 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 481 

it is a question with them as to how far the day, that 
they consider the evil day, shall be deferred. You are 
therefore entitled to say that so far you have done well, 
you have almost done miraculously well, and we hand 
to our successors an unsullied flag, a battle more than 
half won, and a brilliant history. ... I hope it may 
not be necessary for us in the new parliament to devote 
our attention to subsidiary measures, and that it may be 
possible for us to have a program and a platform with 
only one plank — national independence." 

This bold pronouncement coming so soon after Par- 
nell's practical demonstration of the power of the Irish 
party over English governments created a feeling of 
mingled indignation and alarm in England, and a tre- 
mendous howl went up from the English press declar- 
ing the program announced to be impossible, ridicu- 
lous. Lord Hartington, a liberal leader, formally 
replied to the effect that however much English par- 
ties might be divided on other propositions they were 
united in their opposition to the Parnell program. This 
supercilious statement was instantly met by the Irish 
leader in a banquet speech in Dublin in early Septem- 
ber when he said : 

"I believe that if it be sought to make it impossible 
for our country to obtain the right to administer her 
own affairs, we shall make all other things impossible 
for those who strive to bring that about. And who is 
it that tells us that these things are impossible ? It was 
the same man who said that local government for Ire- 
land was impossible without impossible declarations on 
our part. These statements came from the lips that told 
us that the concession of equal electoral privileges to 
Ireland with those in England would be madness; and 
we see that what was considered madness in the eyes 
of the man who now tells us that Ireland's right to self- 



482 THE IRISH ORATORS 

government is an impossibility, lias been now conceded 
without opposition, and that the local self-government 
which was then also denied to us from the same source 
is now offered to us by the same person, with the hum- 
ble entreaty that we take it in order that we may educate 
ourselves for better things and for further powers. . . . 
Well, gentlemen, I am not much given to boasting, and 
I should be very unwilling to assume for myself the role 
of prophet ; but I am obliged, I confess, to-night to give 
you my candid opinion, and it is this — that if they have 
not succeeded in squelching us during the last five years, 
they are not likely to do so during the next five years 
unless they brace themselves up to adopt one of two al- 
ternatives, by the adoption of either one of which we 
should ultimately win, and perhaps win a larger and 
heavier stake than we otherwise should. They will either 
have to grant to Ireland the complete right to rule her- 
self, or they will have to take away from us the share 
— the sham share — in the English constitutional system 
which they extended to us at the union, and govern us 
as a crown colony." 

In declarations such as this Parnell forced the Eng- 
lish parties to take cognizance during the campaign 
of the existence of an Irish question and an Irish 
party. Neither party stood pledged to Home Rule. 
Both parties feared the effect of the united Irish op- 
position. The leaders of all parties entered upon a 
furious flirtation with Parnell — a flirtation not in- 
tended seriously. Some of the leaders, such as 
Churchill, maintained absolute silence on the subject. 
Chamberlain spoke out plainly against ParnelFs pro- 
gram. John Morley deftly touched upon the subject 
and held forth a shadowy suggestion of some settle- 
ment such as in Canada. Lord Salisbury, in his 
speeches, rather stunned his followers — not by accept- 
ing the Parnell plan, for he did not, but by the con- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 483 

servative and half timid nature of his opposition. 
Meanwhile Gladstone — greatest politician of them all 
- — was diplomatically disseminating the idea that he 
was seriously considering the question of Home Rule 
and was sympathetically inclined. In early November 
he delivered a queer pronouncement at Edinburgh in a 
speech of two parts with two meanings, one hinting 
unmistakably at Home Rule, the other indicating op- 
position. This was instantly met by Parnell, who ig- 
nored the second portion of the speech, grasped the 
first part holding forth hope and tried to persuade the 
old man of Hawarden to go further. To this Glad- 
stone replied, like a clever flirt, with some gentle banter 
and upon this Parnell determined to throw his support 
to the Tories. 

"Ireland," he said, "has been knocking at the English 
door long enough with kid gloves. I tell the English 
people to beware and to be wise in time. Ireland will 
soon throw off the kid gloves, and she will knock with 
the mailed hand." 

Then followed a manifesto to the voters bitterly 
denouncing the liberals for their misgovernment of 
Ireland. This greatly surprised and hurt Gladstone, 
and Salisbury, the Tory leader, was seriously con- 
cerned lest the manifesto in the interest of his party 
prove disadvantageous in the English constituencies. 
Such was the ludicrous character of the campaign. 
Feeling a profound contempt for both of the English 
parties, Parnell threw himself with all his power into 
the campaign in Ireland and when the result was an- 
nounced it was found that he had swept Ireland from 
end to end, had captured half of Ulster and would 



4S4 THE IRISH ORATORS 

enter the house of commons with eighty-six followers 
at his back. The result in England gave the liberals 
three hundred and thirty-three, the conservatives two 
hundred and fifty-one — which meant that Parnell by 
throwing his eighty-six votes into the conservative 
camp would give Salisbury a majority of four, and 
that by an alliance with the liberals Gladstone would 
be able to accomplish anything within reason with a 
lead of one hundred and sixty-nine. Thus Parnell was 
the one man who emerged from the elections of 1885 
in the light of a victor, for he held the balance of 
power and was absolute master of the situation. 



VII 



From the moment the result of the election was 
known Parnell lost no time in serving notice that he 
proposed to use his balance of power relentlessly to 
the end that no government would be permitted to dis- 
pose of any public business which did not contemplate 
an immediate consideration of the question of Home 
Rule. Lord Salisbury, the prime minister, realizing 
his inability to carry his party with him on the prop- 
osition, lost all interest in the erstwhile Irish alliance, 
although it appears that Lord Randolph Churchill did 
all he could within the cabinet to preserve the relations 
of the two parties. It was after his failure that he 
made the characteristically cynical remark ascribed to 
him by T. P. O'Connor in The Great Irish Struggle, 
"I have done my best for you and have failed; and 
now, of course, I shall do my best against you." The 
situation presented an entirely different aspect to Glad- 
stone, who entered into negotiations with Parnell with 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 485 

a view to a workable alliance looking toward the con- 
cession of the Irish contention. The Irish leader gave 
the liberal leader to understand that with an Irish par- 
liament and an Irish executive conceded he would not 
quarrel with the prospective liberal government re- 
garding whether there should be one or two chambers 
in the Dublin parliament, or whether there should or 
should not be an Irish representation at Westminster. 
With this understanding Gladstone now inspired a 
story in the press to the effect that he was prepared 
to take up the question of Home Rule. Such was 
the state of the parties at the time parliament con- 
vened in January, 1886. Quite soon after the meet- 
ing of parliament Gladstone submitted his propositions 
to Parnell in written form through a third person, who 
was instructed to read the proposals to the Irish leader 
but to retain possession of the memorandum. It was 
characteristic of Parnell that he should have coolly 
taken the paper from the hands of the messenger and 
have put it in his pocket with the remark that he would 
prepare a reply without delay. The following day 
Parnell notified the liberal leader of his acceptance of 
the general propositions submitted to his consideration. 
All this transpired, of course, with the Tory govern- 
ment still holding on by its eyebrows. 

The alliance between Gladstone and Parnell, how- 
ever, spelt the downfall of the Salisbury ministry and 
when, in the latter part of January, Lord Churchill 
presented a bill for the suppression of the Land League 
the Irish party was left free to strike, and the blow 
fell within a few days and Gladstone returned to power 
with the Irish party at his back. 

During the period when the Home-Rule bill of 1886 



486 THE IRISH ORATORS 

was in preparation Parnell was in close and constant 
communication with Morley, who has given us, in his 
biography of Gladstone, many intensely interesting 
side-lights upon the activities and characteristics of the 
Irish leader. He impressed Morley, one of the most 
erudite and brilliant of modern English statesmen, 
with his frankness, patience, pertinacity, accuracy and 
insight. "Of constructive faculty he never showed a 
trace/* says Morley. "He was a man of temperament, 
of will, of authority, of power; not of ideas or ideals, 
or knowledge, or political maxims, or even of the prac- 
tical reason in any of its higher senses, as Hamilton, 
Madison and Jefferson had practical reason. But he 
knew what he wanted." 

And therein consisted his greatness in the negotiat- 
ions of '86 — he knew precisely what he wanted. He 
was willing to agree to a temporary exclusion of Irish 
representation at Westminster. He was willing to con- 
sent to any arrangement that might be submitted rela- 
tive to the constitution of the two houses of an Irish 
parliament, although he had a partiality for a single 
chamber. His principal fight seems to have centered 
in an effort to exact the best possible financial arrange- 
ments for his country. Upon this point he was insist- 
ent. Morley relates the story of one evening when he 
spent two hours with Parnell wrestling with the ques- 
tion of taxes and customs, and another hour and a 
half after Gladstone had been summoned. When the 
prime minister excused himself at midnight he mut- 
tered under his breath to Morley, who accompanied 
him to the door, "Very clever, very clever. ,, Return- 
ing to Parnell, the conference continued — Parnell po- 
lite, imperturbable, insistent, tireless. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 487 

At length the bill was made acceptable and presented. 
In the midst of the utmost excitement, in the presence 
of the most distinguished company, Gladstone made 
the first of his majestic speeches on the subject which 
will do more to preserve his fame than any other mat- 
ter with which his career is associated. While the 
Irish members were seething with enthusiasm the 
leader of the Irish party sat in their midst, pale, cold, 
tranquil — but watchful, always watchful. 

Meanwhile the enemies of Home Rule multiplied 
their activities. The bigots of Ulster began to organ- 
ize their little rebellion. The bigots of England began 
to mutter their hypocritical prayers for protection 
against the Pope. The milk-and-water liberals com- 
menced to waver and fall out of line before the at- 
tacks of the enemy. The one phase of the situation, 
however, injected by Gladstone, which occasioned the 
greatest concern in all quarters and did the greatest 
damage to the cause was that which hinged upon the 
government's Land bill, which was tied to and made 
a part of the Home-Rule bill. This was intended to 
pave the way for a peasant proprietary and provided 
for a twenty-year purchase of land by the state and 
the sale of the land to the tenants — the state also to 
advance the purchase money and give the tenants 
forty-nine years to pay it back. During this time a 
receiver-general was to be appointed to receive the 
rents and revenues. No one appeared to be wholly 
satisfied with the proposed plan. The Irish, who ac- 
cepted it as a matter of policy, were dissatisfied with 
the receiver-general. The liberals did not like the 
heavy public expenditure entailed and the landlords 
were naturally bitterly antagonistic. The uprising 



488 JHE IRISH ORATORS 

against the Land bill finally became so ominous that 
Gladstone practically agreed to throw it over, and then 
centered his efforts on mustering a majority on the 
second reading of the Home-Rule measure. In the 
meanwhile, Chamberlain, who probably entered the 
cabinet for the purpose of leaving his leader in the 
lurch, had resigned, and some of the liberal aristocrats 
were in open revolt, appearing at public meetings on 
the same platform with Salisbury. The most damag- 
ing defection, however, was that of the venerable John 
Bright, who cast a shadow on his renown by turning 
his back upon the race he had so brilliantly served in 
former years at the very moment when the weight of 
his genius was needed most. But Gladstone fought 
on like a tiger — a magnificent, compelling figure to the 
last. 

It was not until the last night of the debate that 
Parnell participated in the discussion. At that time 
the defeat of the measure was almost a foregone con- 
clusion. Under the depressing atmosphere of impend- 
ing defeat, he spoke with more than his accustomed 
vigor : 

"During the last five years I know, Sir, that there 
have been very severe and drastic coercion bills, but it 
will require an even severer and more drastic coercion 
now. You will require all that you have had during the 
last five years and more besides. What, Sir, has that 
coercion been ? You have had, Sir, during those last five 
years — I don't say this to inflame passion — you have had 
during those five years the suspension of the Habeas 
Corpus act; you have had one thousand of your fellow 
Irish subjects held in prison without specific charge, many 
of them for long periods of time, some of them for 
twenty months without trial, and without any intention 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELU 489 

of placing them upon trial ; you have had the Arms act ; 
you have had the suspension of trial by jury — all during 
the last five years. You have authorized your police to 
enter the domicile of a citizen, of your fellow subject 
in Ireland, at any hour of the day or night, and search 
any part of this domicile, even the beds of the women, 
without warrant. You have fined the innocent for of- 
fenses committed by the guilty, you have taken power 
to expel aliens from the country, you have revived the 
curfew law and the blood money of your Norman con- 
querors, you have gagged the press and seized and sup- 
pressed newspapers, you have manufactured new crimes 
and offenses, and applied fresh penalties unknown to your 
law for these crimes and offenses. All this you have done 
for five years — and much more you will have to do 
again." 

It was this speech which Morley pronounces "the 
most masterly that ever fell from him." But it was of 
no avail. Gladstone closed the debate for the ministry 
in one of his most powerful and eloquent orations, but 
it availed nothing. It was reason bumping its head 
against the inanimate brick wall of bigotry. The vote 
was taken and the government was defeated by three 
hundred and forty-three to three hundred and thirteen 
— ninety-three liberal traitors having turned the trick. 

The fall of the liberal ministry was followed by a 
dissolution and an appeal to the country which will go 
down in history as one of the most inspiring and bril- 
liant and spectacular in the history of English politics 
because of the magnificent orations with which Glad- 
stone, the giant, bombarded the castle of the bigots, 
Thus had a wonderful political revolution been 
wrought through the far-seeing sagacity and diplo- 
macy of Parnell. Hardly more than a year before the 
liberals had been a unit in their fight upon the pro- 



490 THE IRISH ORATORS 



gram of Parnell — and now Parnell sat back and con- 
templated the delectable spectacle of Gladstone him- 
self fighting the Irish battles on the English hustings 
with a brilliant fury that amazed and captivated the 
world. The result of the elections gave the Tories a 
majority of one hundred and eighteen — but consider- 
ing the enormous liberal defection, the English big- 
otry, the opposition of the opulent landlords, all in 
active cooperation with the Tories, the liberal defeat 
of 1886 was scarcely less than a triumph. 

Lord Salisbury returned to office only to be met by 
Parnell on the threshold of the new parliament with 
a Land bill proposing the abatement of rents fixed be- 
fore 1885 provided the tenants were unable to pay the 
full amount and were prepared to pay half. Reen- 
f orced now by Gladstonian support he spoke a haughty 
language, warning the government that the rejection 
of the bill would be followed by another period of 
turmoil in Ireland. The bill was rejected — and tur- 
moil resulted. Another brutal coercion act was passed. 
A veritable state of war characterized the green isle. 
Public meetings were suppressed. Great districts were 
proclaimed and reduced to a condition of absolute sub- 
jugation. In the trials that resulted, the government 
again resorted to the old barbaric trick of packing the 
juries. The leaders of the people were ruthlessly and 
without cause thrown into prison. The number of 
evictions with their attending suffering, multiplied. 
Ireland was ruled by brute force — and the brutes who 
ruled were the British Tories. 

And all the while Gladstone, true leader that he was, 
devoted himself to educating the public opinion of 
England. The alliance between Gladstone and Parnell, 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 491 

between the liberals and the Irish, was open and above 
board. So remarkable had been the change wrought 
in the relations of parties through the diplomacy of 
Parnell that the liberals sent up the Macedonian cry 
to the Irish parliamentarians to come over and help 
out on the English hustings. The Irish leader actually 
shared the popularity of Gladstone with the English 
democracy and the liberal party, and when he ap- 
peared, after much importunity at a liberal meeting 
at St. James' hall, with John Morley in the chair, the 
audience was fairly intoxicated by its enthusiasm. 
Cold, calm, concise, resorting to none of the rhetorical 
tricks of the hustings, dignified, and apparently indif- 
ferent to English applause, his very aloofness in- 
flamed his English hearers. 

And during this period Parnell again demonstrated 
his political sagacity. Never in his career did he 
speak with such moderation and conservatism. He 
stood out almost in the light of an Irish reactionary. 
In this he had a motive. He knew that he held Ire- 
land in the hollow of his hand. He realized that the 
fight had to be won with the English voters. He felt 
that the strong language of an Irishman might have 
the effect of compromising the Irish cause in England. 
And in England, an English leader, immensely popu- 
lar, rarely endowed with genius and eloquence, was 
putting his whole soul into the fight for Home Rule — 
pouring forth a veritable flood of passionate protests 
against the wrongs of Erin and demanding in the 
name of justice and decency the recognition of the 
Irish right to Home Rule. With Gladstone fairly 
shocking his fellow Englishmen with the passionate 
speeches he was making, Parnell chose to play the 



492 THE IRISH ORATORS 

moderate and the conservative. By subordinating 
himself to Gladstone, he was making the Home-Rule 
cause, the cause of the most popular political leader 
in the England from which, alone, Home Rule could 
be conceded. 

VIII 

The masterly manner in which Parnell had so di- 
rected events as to make it incumbent upon one of the 
leading English parties to stand sponsor for Home 
Rule was maddening to the enemies of Ireland. As 
Gladstone continued with unabated energy his bril- 
liant advocacy of the proposals of Parnell, the Tory 
element and the aristocratic section of the liberal 
party were made to understand that the Irish question 
had been introduced for good into English politics un- 
less something should develop to compromise and dis- 
credit the Home-Rule cause. The more unscrupulous 
of the enemies of this cause commenced to apply their 
ingenuity and inventive genius to the discovery of 
some crime traceable to the door of the Irish leader. 
Thus in 1887 the London Times, which has continued 
unto the present hour to misrepresent the conditions in 
Ireland and the cause of the Irish people, began the 
publication of a series of articles under the sensational 
caption of Parnellism and Crime. (These articles 
were of no importance, being nothing more than the 
rinsings of the dirty partisan pot — an indiscriminate 
enumeration of outrages and all ascribed by inuendo 
and insinuation to the leader of the Irish people.) The 
Times realized the weakness of its case and was ex- 
tremely anxious for something of a really compromis- 
ing nature to use against Parnell. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 493 

It was about this time that a discredited and rather 
mediocre Irish journalist, Richard Pigott, reduced to 
the necessity of living on his wits, took notice of the 
necessities of the Times. 

Cunning suggested the forging of Parnell's name to 
a compromising letter and the selling of the letter to 
the most dignified and respectable journal, according 
to English public opinion, in the empire. The letter 
was prepared and couched in such terms as to create 
in a reader the positive conviction that the author was 
in possession of a guilty knowledge of the Phcenix 
Park murders. To this infamous letter Pigott scrib- 
bled the name of Charles Stewart Parnell. It is al- 
most inconceivable that a paper like the London Times 
should have had the temerity to accept and publish 
such a letter — but the Times made it the crowning fea- 
ture of its exposure of Pamellism and Crime. Upon 
the publication of the forged letter the liberals and 
Gladstone manifested the keenest concern. It was 
characteristic of Parnell that he should have consid- 
ered the Times articles with their purchased letter be- 
neath his notice. The nervousness of his liberal al- 
lies, however, finally impelled him to pronounce calmly 
the letter a forgery in a rather indifferent speech in 
the house of commons. His very moderation of lan- 
guage alarmed his friends in the liberal party, and 
finally, in a disgusted frame of mind, he demanded 
the appointment of a select committee of the house to 
institute a thorough investigation. 

During his connection with Irish affairs Parnell had 
come to know Pigott very well, too well. He had in 
his possession letters from the forger and he knew 
something about the financial difficulties and the crimi- 



494 THE IRISH ORATORS 

nal capabilities of the journalist. It appears that 
when Parnell sat down to a critical study of the forged 
letter he had Pigott in mind as the possible author. 
Immediately he hit upon the misspelling of the word 
"hesitancy," which was spelled with an "e" instead of 
an "a," and he recalled having received a letter from 
Pigott in which the same word had been employed 
and the identical mistake had been made. With this 
and this alone as a clew Pigott was summoned to 
London and upon his arrival he was enticed to a meet- 
ing with the brilliant Henry Labouchere — the wasp of 
English journalism, and one of the clever iconoclasts 
and free lances of the commons. Subjected to a rigid 
cross-examination, Pigott finally made a confession, 
but on the following day he regained his nerve and re- 
fused to repeat his confession to the public and denied 
ever having made it. 

Throughout the long-drawn legal battle ParneH's 
friends were increasingly alarmed. The leader him- 
self appeared on the surface to be contemptuously in- 
different. It was not until Pigott was called to the 
stand and subjected to a remarkable cross-examination 
by Sir Charles Russell that the Irish leader began to 
get his inning. Never perhaps in any court at any 
time has any witness ever received such a grilling as 
fell to the lot of the scoundrel at the hands of Russell. 
Before the almost cruel bombardment of questions 
the wretched forger gradually weakened, and when he 
left the stand for the noon recess on the final day of 
his cross-examination, it was remarked that he would 
not return. The prediction came true. Pigott made 
his escape from England. A few days later he made 






CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 495 

an admission of his guilt — and a little later the world 
learned of his suicide. Thus fell, most miserably and 
shamefully, the case of the London Times against 
Charles Stewart Parnell. 

The result was an immediate and tremendous re- 
action in his favor. The enthusiasm of his friends 
was boundless. The chagrin of his enemies was deep. 
The gratitude of the liberals manifested itself in the 
utmost jubilation. The scene in the house of com- 
mons on his first appearance after his triumphant vin- 
dication has had few parallels in the history of the 
parliament. He was late on reaching Westminster 
and his approach was heralded to the waiting members 
by the shouting of the multitudes in the streets. His 
entrance was the signal for an ovation. Almost imme- 
diately after entering the house he rose to speak. As 
he stood there, extremely pale, his handsome features 
disclosing no emotion, the Irish members began to 
cheer. Then with a shout they jumped to their feet. 
The enthusiasm was contagious. The members of the 
liberal party who had been made to suffer during the 
progress of the trial, threw aside their dignity and 
rose to their feet in imitation of the more inflammable 
Irish. It was a scene never before witnessed in the 
house of commons — an English party joining in an 
inspiring tribute to a hated Irish leader. And then the 
climax of it all came when no less a personage than 
William Ewart Gladstone stood up and with a beam- 
ing face turned in welcoming attitude toward Parnell 
His example was enough. Instantly former members 
of English cabinets were on their feet — and the ova- 
tion continued. And all the while Parnell stood, pale 



496 THE IRISH ORATORS 

to the lips, but apparently unmoved, declining to bow 
his thanks to the fickle crowd that had only the day 
before been ready to join in his crucifixion. 

At length the tumult died down, and the members 
resumed their seats, eager to hear what Parnell would 
have to say about the damnable conspiracy which had 
been hatched for his destruction. In a cold even tone, 
he began to speak — and the house of commons was 
immeasurably amazed to find him calmly discussing 
the question before the house and without a single ref- 
erence to the celebrated trial. At this time Parnell 
stood upon the very pinnacle of his power and popu- 
larity. He was the veritable uncrowned king of Ire- 
land. His battle was being fought in England by the 
great liberal party, and Gladstone was still thunder- 
ing his demand for the concession of Irish rights. An 
election was approaching, and with every prospect of 
a successful issue. Home Rule loomed large on the 
horizon. The battle was almost over, the fight was 
almost won. 

And then came the Nemesis — trailing on behind. 
The greatest moment in Parneirs career before had 
been the hour of his liberation from prison with an 
Irish concession in his hand. At that very hour the 
murderers struck down Lord Cavendish in Phoenix 
Park. And now after his last and greatest triumph — 
the Nemesis struck again, and the world was shocked 
and stunned on learning that Captain O'Shea had sued 
for divorce and had named as co-respondent Charles 
Stewart Parnell. 

The Irish leader offered no defense, and the divorce 
was granted. 

The political effect was tremendous. The heart- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 497 

breaking possibilities instantly appealed to the mem- 
bers of the Irish party, and, three days after the di- 
vorce, a meeting of the National League was held in 
Dublin, and, with John Redmond in the chair, a resolu- 
tion was passed unanimously to sustain Parnell. In 
England the effect was quite different. One English 
politician, Henry Labouchere, took the position that it 
was none of England's business whom the Irish people 
selected for their leader — but Labouchere was more 
French than English in temperament. The English 
moralists began to move. The relations between the 
Home-Rule movement and the liberal party were now 
so intimate that the liberal leaders, whether sympa- 
thizing with the hue and cry or not, felt obliged to 
take cognizance of it. The inevitable decision was 
reached that they could not afford to carry the load. 
Gladstone, Morley and William T. Stead, took the po- 
sition that the continued relations between the liberals 
and the Irish depended upon the deposition of Parnell 
from the leadership of the Irish party. It was Glad- 
stone's contention to Justin McCarthy that no other 
event could save from defeat the liberal party, to 
whom the Irish people were looking for Home Rule. 
Meanwhile the Irish members met in London and 
reelected their chosen champion to the position of 
leader. Then followed the publication of Gladstone's 
letter demanding the retirement of Parnell. This im- 
pelled many of the Irish members to the conclusion 
that perhaps it would be best for their leader to retire 
at least temporarily from public life. The wonderful 
battle that was waged among the Irish members at 
their prolonged conferences has probably never been 
equaled in its dramatic features. Parnell sat tight. 



498 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



Instead of retiring under fires he proposed the terms 
of his withdrawal — that Gladstone would pledge him- 
self in writing in a letter to McCarthy to give the 
Irish parliament, which seemed assured, control of the 
police and the land. The refusal of Gladstone to dis- 
cuss terms let loose the dogs of war. The Irish party- 
was hopelessly split. With an imposing eloquence, 
John Redmond fought the battle for Parnell. "When 
we are asked," he said, "to sell our leader to preserve 
the English alliance, it seems to me that we are bound 
to inquire what we are getting for the price we are 
paying." But the question was non-debatable. The 
differences were irreconcilable. And when at length 
the impossibility of an agreement was disclosed Justin 
McCarthy led forty- four seceders from the room, leav- 
ing Parnell in possession with the remaining twenty- 
And thus, just on the edge of the Promised 



six. 



Land, the people of Ireland once more turned their 
faces to the wilderness. 



IX 



Parnell now determined to fight. He looked upon 
the English leaders as hypocrites, as he always had. 
He despised the public opinion of England, as he al- 
ways had. And now with his leadership disputed he 
turned again to Ireland to wage his battle for a vindi- 
cation. The activities of Parnell during the next few 
months constitute a story of ineffable pathos. "I do 
not pretend," he said at Dublin, "that I have not mo- 
ments of trial and temptation, but I do claim that never 
in thought or deed have I been false to the trust that 
Irishmen have confided to me." Js[o one could deny 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 499 

it. If he had transgressed the moral law, he had been 
true to his people. His fight, however, was a losing 
fight, albeit he fought with the desperation of despair. 
Defeated in the bitter election contests at North Kil- 
kenny, Sligo and Carlow, he persevered and pretended 
to see light where others saw but darkness. 

Every Saturday he left London for Ireland where 
he crowded in as many speeches as possible until Mon- 
day night when he resumed his place in the house of 
commons. Burning the candle at both ends, his slen- 
der form grew slighter, his pallor deepened. We have 
a touching picture of him at this time trying to amuse 
himself one night in Dublin. After the theater he re- 
membered a little oyster house in Grafton Street to 
which he had gone years before and here, in the com- 
pany of a friend, he remained until the early hours of 
the morning in reminiscent mood. Three weeks be- 
fore the end, when Justin McCarthy remonstrated 
with him on account of his ceaseless activity, he re- 
plied, with a sad smile, that in his present state of 
mind he thought the constant traveling and speaking 
did him good. 

In the early autumn of 1891 the health of Parnell 
was in a precarious state, but he persisted in his fight. 
In late September, his health hopelessly shattered, he 
defied the orders of his physician to speak at Creggs, 
and, notwithstanding great bodily pain, he made there 
his final appeal to Ireland. He left the platform with 
the imprint of death upon his face, and retired to his 
house at Brighton where he was forced to take to his 
bed. The general public knew little about his physical 
condition and the fight against him went on with un- 
diminished fury until October seventh when the news 



500 THE IRISH ORATORS 

flashed over the wires that Charles Stewart Parnell 
was dead. The announcement created a sensation in 
London. There was a momentary hush. The bitter 
tongues of his enemies were stilled. The greatest 
friend of Ireland was dead — and Ireland helped to 
kill him. 

On Sunday morning, in October, the steamer Ire- 
land pulled in at Kingston, and one forenoon the body 
of the dead chieftain lay in state in the City Hall in 
Dublin, and a vast concourse of people followed the 
hearse to Grasnevin cemetery where, not far from the 
grave of O'Connell, Parnell was buried. 

The years that have gone since Parnell died within 
sound of the sea have softened the animosities of the 
year of his death, and the world has almost forgotten, 
or, if it remembers, it is with pity rather than with 
hate, the story of the scandal; but the years have 
served to accentuate the most notable pictures of his 
marvelous career — the Parnell standing almost alone 
in the house of commons, torn by turmoil, and forcing 
a consideration of Irish rights; — the Parnell playing 
chess at Kilmainham, and from the vantage point of 
a prison coaxing an important Irish concession from 
the prime minister of the empire; — the Parnell con- 
solidating Ireland and haughtily giving terms to the 
supplicating leaders of English parties — this Parnell, 
the real Parnell, will never die. The path he blazed is 
the path his people have trod, and ultimately it will be 
the path to victory. 

His was a complex personality. The emotional side 
of his nature, so carefully concealed from the public 
which thought him cold and calculating, has been 
shown us in the reminiscences of his sister, Mrs. Dick- 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 501 

inson, his brother John Parnell, and Mrs. O'Shea. His 
amazing superstitions, such as his fear of the color 
green, his horror of the number thirteen, his tendency 
to attach a tragic significance to three lighted candles, 
to the unexplainable falling of any object, or the 
breaking of glass, are inexplicable. He felt a tender 
solicitude for the welfare of his tenants. He loved 
dogs and horses and the beauties of nature. His 
haughtiness, so often referred to in reproach, was but 
the manifestation of his shyness of strangers. Be- 
neath the frozen crust was a fiery crater. That this 
man who had read little, who knew scarcely any his- 
tory, who was utterly lacking in the poetic qualities of 
the Celt, and who was as simple as the most humble 
peasant in his superstitions should have developed into 
the greatest leader, save one perhaps, of the Irish race 
is one of the phenomena of history. That he remained 
an enigma to the English leaders may be assumed 
from the statement given out by Gladstone after Par- 
nell had passed away at Brighton : 

"Parnell was the most remarkable man I ever met. 
I do not say he was the ablest man ; I say the most re- 
markable man. He was an intellectual phenomenon. He 
was unlike any one I had ever met. He did things 
and said things unlike other men. His ascendency 
over his party was remarkable. There has never been 
anything like it in my experience in the house of com- 



mons." 



X 



In the extracts from Parnell's speeches which have 
been used it will be noted that he was not a great 



502 THE IRISH ORATORS 

orator in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The 
fervor of expression, the rhetorical grace and fire, the 
epigrammatic brilliance, the emotional appeal with 
which one associates Irish oratory were almost wholly 
lacking. There was nothing of rhetorical eloquence in 
his utterances. Nor was there the slightest dramatic 
effect in his manner of speaking. Of gestures there 
was comparatively none. His voice was adequate, but 
not musical and there was no attempt at modulation. 
And yet he made profound impressions on immense 
audiences and commanded the most perfect attention 
ordinarily when he spoke in the house of commons. 
The secret of his success on the platform and in the 
house lay in the fact that the hearer knew that behind 
every word was an idea, and behind every idea was a 
man. When Richard Lalor Sheil delivered one of his 
masterful rhetorical masterpieces, full of fight, the 
people were delighted with the rolling thunder of the 
sound, and impressed with the artistry of the actor, 
but Sheil could not have framed a sentence sufficiently 
fervent to have created half the impression that Parnell 
could have created by the cold utterance of the simple 
words, "Keep a firm grip upon your homesteads." 

The eloquence of Parnell then was quite similar to 
that of Napoleon. He was not an orator, as we popu- 
larly understand oratory, and yet his short speeches to 
his soldiers on the verge of battle were infinitely more 
effective than the most stirring eloquence of Pitt. 
While Parnell was not an actor he held audiences by 
the spell of his personality. There was something of 
fascinating mystery about him that appealed to people. 
He possessed one advantage on the platform — he was 
a handsome man of imposing personal appearance. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 503 

Gladstone throws a sidelight on his power over the peo- 
ple when he says : "He did things and he said things 
unlike other men." But John Redmond, in his lecture 
on The House of Commons, gives us the best idea of 
Parnell, the orator: "He seldom spoke, once he had 
risen to a commanding position in parliament. When 
he did speak the silence that crept over the 

HOUSE WAS ABSOLUTELY PAINFUL IN ITS INTENSITY. 

He had something of that quality which Coleridge 
ascribed to the Ancient Mariner. 'He held them by 
his glittering eye, they could not choose but hear.' He 
was no orator in the ordinary acceptation of the term. 
Indeed he commenced his parliamentary career as a 
halting speaker, with almost an impediment in his 
speech. As time went on it is true he spoke with ease 
and fluency, but the great quality of his speaking was 
its clearness, its directness and terseness. 'No man/ 
said Gladstone of him, 'is more successful in doing 
that which it is commonly supposed all speakers do, 
but which, in my opinion, few do, namely, in saying 
what he means.' " Indeed Parnell was incapable of 
speaking at all unless he had something definite to 
say and knew whereof he spoke. 

A very fine tribute is paid his speech in closing the 
Home-Rule debate of 1886 by John Morley in his bi- 
ography of Gladstone when he writes: "The Irish 
leader made one of the most masterful speeches that 
ever fell from him. Whether agreeing with or dif- 
fering from the policy, every unprejudiced listener felt 
that this was not the mere dialectic of a party debater, 
dealing smartly with abstract or verbal or artificial 
arguments, but the utterance of a statesman with his 
eye firmly fixed upon the actual circumstances of the 



504 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



nation for whose government this bill would make him 
responsible. As he deals with Ulster, with finance, 
with the supremacy of parliament, with the loyal mi- 
nority, with the settlement of education in an Irish 
legislature — soberly, steadily, deliberately, with that 
full, familiar, deep insight into the facts of a country, 
which is only possible to a man who belongs to it and 
has passed his life in it, the effect of Mr. Parnell's 
speech was to make even able disputants on either side 
look little better than amateurs." 

Considering the remarkable men who participated 
in this debate — Gladstone, Salisbury, Morley, Church- 
ill and Chamberlain — this was a fine compliment in- 
deed, especially from the pen of one of the most schol- 
arly men in English public life. 

While entertaining a contempt for the mere rhet- 
orician it must not be supposed that he was wholly 
indifferent to the niceties of expression. He never 
attempted to say things beautifully or impressively, 
but he always strove desperately to say things pre- 
cisely as he would have them said. In his Liverpool 
speech on his return from his American tour he seemed 
struggling for a word. His friends on the platform 
whispered the word they thought he wanted only to 
have their suggestions ignored and the speaker use 
another and more precise and effective word. It is 
probable that he gave more attention to the preparation 
of the speeches he delivered on his American tour than 
to any others of his career. He entered upon the task 
of stating the case of Ireland to America with fear 
and trembling. It was not a congenial duty. He hated 
crowds. An audience never failed to make him nerv- 
ous. However, he had enough strength of character 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 505 

to overcome his distaste, and while his American 
speeches were not the ponderous, powerful, polished 
and stirring appeals that McCarthy, Redmond and 
Healy have made to American audiences, they made 
a deep indelible impression everywhere and satisfied 
the Irish-Americans that in the speaker Ireland had 
a champion who meant business. During the tour he 
developed into an effective rough and ready cam- 
paigner such as Americans like. He had a way of 
introducing local color into his speeches and of refer- 
ring to incidents and organizations at the meeting that 
pleased the crowds. Of all his American speeches per- 
haps the most complete exposition of the Irish cause 
and the one most conscientiously prepared was that 
which was delivered to the American house of repre- 
sentatives. The occasion must have inspired even Par- 
nell. 

It is probable that his speeches in the house of com- 
mons caused him less mental anguish and nervous ef- 
fort than those spoken to the Irish-Americans and to 
the Irish audiences. His brother quotes him as saying 
that he never cared particularly what the English 
thought of his speeches, but in addressing an audience 
on Irish soil he had an intense longing for sympathy 
and approval. Perhaps he himself expressed his atti- 
tude when, in response to the question: "Don't you 
feel a little excited and proud when they all cheer you 
and really you?" he responded with one of his illumina- 
tive smiles : "Yes, when it is really me, when I am in 
the midst of a peasant crowd in Ireland."* 



*The question was asked by Mrs. O'Shea, afterward Mrs. 
Parnell, and is recorded in her book on the Irish leader, recently 
published, 



506 



THE IRISH ORATORS 



Perhaps, after all, the secret of ParnelPs hold on 
the confidence and affection of the Irish people is that 
they could see through the cold exterior of the man 
and see the beating of his heart. 






X 



THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY 
1891-1912 

SINCE THE PASSING OF PARNELE 

THE various movements, policies an3 activities of 
the Irish patriots since the death of Parnell will 
require the perspective of years to determine with any 
degree of certitude their place in history. After the 
historic meeting in committee room fifteen the parlia- 
mentary party was torn by disheartening dissensions 
for almost a decade, with Justin McCarthy, the bril- 
liant historian, and later John Dillon, leading the larger 
division, with John E. Redmond in command of the 
remnants of the Parnell following, and Tim Healy 
playing a minor role. This decade witnessed the 
treachery of the English liberals under the direction 
of Lord Rosebery, and the reduction of the Irish to 
such impotency that an attempt was actually made to 
reduce the Irish representation. The latter attempt 
literally drove the factional leaders to a unification of 
their forces under the leadership of Redmond, whose 
loyalty to the memory of Parnell here stood him in 
good stead. The six following years brought a per- 
ceptible brightening in the prospects for Home Rule, 
and the passage of the Land Purchase Act of 1903, 
the most sweeping land reform in the history of the 

507 



508 THE IRISH ORATORS 

island, wrought a revolution in the condition of the 
tenants. 

With the triumph of the liberals under Sir Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman, and later under Henry Asquith, 
a close alliance was formed between the government 
and the Irish party, and here we enter controversial 
ground. The bitter battling between the liberals and 
the conservatives or unionists over the budget of 
Lloyd-George, and the destruction of the veto power 
of the house of lords, resulted in general elections in 
which the Irish party stood steadfastly by the liberals 
with the distinct understanding that the Home-Rule 
bill would be ultimately taken up and pushed to its 
passage. The events that have transpired since the 
original introduction of the Home-Rule bill have re- 
sulted in much bitterness and the real purport of these 
events must await the illumination of time. The amaz- 
ing complacency with which the government contem- 
plated the arming of the rebels of Ulster, against the 
prospective operation of the bill, under the leadership 
of Sir Edwin Carson, who was permitted to pass 
without criticism from the camp of armed rebels to 
the deliberations of the rfouse of commons, will prob- 
ably be hard to explain. The infamous massacre of 
the nationalists by the soldiery in the streets of Dub- 
lin because of actions that had been countenanced in 
Belfast will be more difficult of explanation. Out of 
the growing fear of treachery has developed once 
again the militant spirit, and under the leadership of 
Sir Roger Casement there has come an amazing re- 
vival of the Volunteer movement, similar to that in 
the days of Flood, and with more than one hundred 
and sixty thousand men enrolled. The situation had 



THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY r 509 

reached an acute stage when the world war, now in 
progress, dropped the curtain on the scene. The rest 
is with to-morrow. 

Such is the inspiring story of the struggles of the 
Irish people for more than a century and a half to 
attain those rights and liberties of which they have 
been deprived. It has been a story of violated treaties, 
of broken promises, of continuous treachery, of gib- 
bets, dungeons, evictions, famines and massacres, but 
the gloom of the darkest period has been illuminated 
by the genius, the eloquence, the heroism of the race. 
The centuries, blood-stained and tear-stained, have 
made it plain that the Irish will not be slaves. Time 
and again their aspirations have been crushed by the 
mailed hand of might, only to flower again. Never 
have they acquiesced in their degradation. And never 
has the call to martyrdom been in vain. The "dis- 
grace/' born of the scaffold and the prison, has brought 
no blush to the cheek of the patriot, for they who have 
been stigmatized by the courts as traitors have been 
glorified by the Irish people as martyrs to the cause 
of freedom. Thus the Wexford men of '98 are not 
execrated and forgotten, but are treasured in the Irish 
heart. Emmet passed from the scaffold to immortal- 
ity. The Fenians of Manchester are martyrs to the 
race they tried to serve. Meagher and Mitchell are 
glorious memories in every Irish cot on two continents 
and the far-flung islands of the seas. The Irish race, 
looking back over the century and a half that we have 
traced, has no apology to make to history — and the 
fight goes on! 

No better, perhaps, can this story of Irish leaders 
and movements be brought to a close than in the words 



510 THE IRISH ORATORS 

of Grattan, so beautifully expressive of the spirit of 
every loyal son of Erin: 

"I never will be satisfied as long as the meanest cot- 
tager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking 
to his rags; he may be naked, he shall not be in irons; 
and I do see the time at hand, the spirit has gone forth, 
the declaration is planted; and though great men shall 
apostatize, yet the cause will live; and though the pub- 
lic speaker shall die, yet the immortal fire shall outlive 
the humble organ that conveyed it, and the spirit of lib- 
erty, like the words of the holy man, shall not perish 
with the prophet, but survive him." 



THE END 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Henry Flood — Life of Henry Flood, by Warden Flood. 
Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, by Lecky. Leaders 
of Public Opinion in Ireland, by Lecky. End of the 
Irish Parliament, by J. R. Fisher. Distinguished Irish- 
men, by Willis. Grattan' s Parliament, by McDonnell 
Bodkin. Dublin Review, August, 1842. North Amer- 
ican Review, January, 1873. 

Henry Grattan — Life of Grattan, by his son. Speeches 
of Grattan. End of the Irish Parliament, by J. R. 
Fisher. Grattan's Parliament, by McDonnell Bodkin. 
Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, by Lecky. His- 
tory of Ireland, by Finnerty. United Irishmen, by 
Madden. Life of Pitt, by Rosebery. Edinburg Re- 
view, February, 1823. 

John Philpot Curran — Life of Curran, by his son. 
Recollections of Curran, by Phillips. Recollections 
of Curran, by O'Regan. Curran' s Speeches. United 
Irishmen, by Madden. Irish State Trials. Edinburg 
Review, 1808. North American Review, 1820. Hol- 
land House Circle. Living Age, 1886. 

Robert Emmet— Memoirs of the Emmet Family, by 
Doctor Emmet. Life of Emmet, by Madden. Life 
of Emmet, by O'Donoghue. Life of Emmet, by Da- 
vis. Life of Emmet, by Louise Guiney. Trial of 

Emmet. 

513 



514 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Lord Plunkett — Life of Plunkett, by David Plunkett. 
Life and Speeches of Plunkett, by J. C. Hoey. End 
of the Irish Parliament, by Fisher. Grattan's Parlia- 
ment, by Bodkin. Life of Pitt, by Rosebery. Edin- 
burg Review, July, 1867. Dublin University Maga- 
zine, March, 1840. Dublin Review, July, 1867. 

Daniel O'Connell — Life of O'Connell, by his son. Life 
of O'Connell, by Fagan. Life of O'Connell, by Cu- 
sack. Early Life and Journal of O'Connell, by Hous- 
ton. Collected Speeches of O'Connell. Recollections 
of O'Connell, by O'Neil Daunt. Oration on O'Con- 
nell, by Wendell Phillips. Leaders of Public Opinion 
in Ireland, by Lecky. Life of Lord Beaconsfield, 
by Moneypenny. History of Ireland, by Mitchell. 
"O'Connell as an Orator," Temple Bar, October, 
1864. "O'Connelliana," Temple Bar, October, 1875. 
"O'Connell at Darrynane," by Howitt, Living Age, 
1846. "O'Connell as Landlord," Living Age, Febru- 
ary, 1846. Life of Richard Lalor Shell, by M'Cullagh. 
Speeches of Richard Lalor Sheil. Emancipation 
Speeches of Charles Phillips. 

Thomas Francis Meagher — Life of Meagher, by 
Lyons. Life of Meagher, by Cavanaugh. Speeches 
of Thomas Francis Meagher. Last Days in Virginia 
with the Irish Brigade, by Meagher. History of Ire- 
land, by Mitchell. Young Ireland, by Sir C. G. Duffy. 
Mitchell's Jail Journal. "Sketches by Meagher," 
Harper's Monthly, 1858, 1867. 

Isaac Butt — History of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 
by O'Donnell. Recollections of Fenians and Fenian- 
ism, by O'Leary. Speeches by Butt in the Fenian 
Trials. State Trials in Ireland. Recollections of an 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 515 

Irish Journalist, by Pigott. Recollections, by O'Brien. 
Young Ireland, by Duffy. The Parnell Movement, by 
T. P. O'Connor. Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, by 
Davitt. Appeal for Amnesty, by Butt. 1 Irish People 
and the Irish Land, by Butt. A Plea for the Celtic 
Race, by Butt. Dublin University Review, June, 1879. 
Freeman's Journal (Dublin). Irish Rebels, by O'Don- 
ovan Rossa. 

Charles Stewart Parnell — Life of Parnell, by 
O'Brien. The Parnell Family, by Mrs. Dickinson. 
Life of Parnell, by John Parnell. The Parnell Move- 
ment, by T. P. O'Connor. History of the Irish Par- 
liamentary Party, by O'Donnell. Life of Parnell, by 
T. Sherlock. The Great Struggle, by T. P. O'Connor. 
Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, by Rosebery. Life 
of Lord Randolph Churchill, by Churchill. Life of 
Gladstone, by Morley. Histories and Reminiscences, 
by McCarthy. Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, by Da- 
vitt. Lecture on the House of Commons, by Red- 
mond. 



INDEX 



INDEX 

Anglesea, Marquis of, 281, 282, 285, 288. 
Anti-Union paper, 180, 181. 
Asquith, Henry, 508. 

*Bellew, Councillor, debate with O'Connell, 255, 256. 

Bibliography, 513. 

Biggar, Joseph, 431, 432. 

Brougham, Lord, 196, 198, 279, 289. 

Burgh, Hussey, 54, 56, 60, 68, 133, 155. 

Burrowes, Peter, 171, 176. 

Bushe, Chas. Kendall, 171, 176. 

Butt, Isaac: early days and education, 375; early literary work, 
376 ; becomes Queen's Counsel, 377 ; his ultra-conservatism, 
377; darling of the Conservatives, 378; debates with 
O'Connell, 378, 379; undergoes process of Anglicization, 
379, 380; defends Meagher and O'Brien, 380; Tory career 
in parliament, 380-382; loses parliamentary seat, 384; de- 
fends Fenianism in the courts, 383-387; his speeches in 
defense of Fenians, 388-397; organizes the Amnesty Asso- 
ciation, 398; petitions Gladstone, 398, 399; organizes mon- 
ster protest meetings, 398, 399; his tribute to the Fenians, 
400 ; effect of Fenian association on his political character, 
405-407; organizes Home-Rule Movement, 509; his disad- 
vantages, 409-411; his idea of Home Rule, 411-413; his 
method of parliamentary warfare, 414 ; his efforts for land 
reform, 415-417; his mild type of obstruction, 417, 418; 
loses confidence of Fenians, 418, 419; displaced as leader, 
419; his oratory, 420-423. 

Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 508. 
Carnarvon, Lord, 479, 480. 
Carson, Sir Edwin, 508. 
Casement, Sir Roger, 508. 

Castlereafh; Lord, 60,' 98, 102, 106, 175, 176, 178, 180, 182, 18*- 

188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 200, 201, 249 
Catholic Emancipation, 109-112, 247-249, 272-274, 279-282, 286. 
Chamberlain, Joseph, 470, 477, 482 
Charlemont, Lord, 50, 63, 67, 116, 173, 174, 240. 

519 



520 ~ k INDEX 

Churchill, Lord Randolph, 420, 476-478, 480, 482, 484, 486. 

Churchill, Winston, 478. 

Clan-na-Gael, 445, 446. 

Clare, Lord, 47, 60, 63, 78, 79, 82, 84, 87, 97, 98, 133, 191, 192, 211, 
317. 

Clontarf, meeting at, 310. 

Cornwallis, Lord : character and work, 175, 188 ; his Union tour, 
202. 

Corry, Isaac: defense of Union, 105; attacked by Grattan, 106; 
duel with Grattan, 107. 

Curran, John Philpot: youth and studies, 128-130; life in Lon- 
don, 131, 132; parliamentary career, 133-139; advocate of 
Ireland, 137 ; defense of Rowan, 138--140 ; defense of Jack- 
son, 141 ; defense of Finnerty, 141-144 ; defense of Finney, 
145; defense of patriots of '98, 146-153, Harvey v. Sirr, 
153; defense of Justice Johnson, 154; as wit and man, 155- 
159; his oratory, 159-167. 

Curran, Sarah, 224-228, 236. 

Davis Thomas 329 

Davitt, Michaei, 413, 446-448, 450, 451, 461, 472, 473. 

Devlin, Ann, 224, 226. 

Devoy, John, 385, 422, 446, 447. 

Dillon, John, 356, 357. 

Dillon, John, 2nd, 505, 507. 

Dublin: in days just before the Union, 173; in famine days, 348; 

just after the Union, 192, 193. 
Duels: Grattan with Corry, 107; Curran with Clare, 133. 
Duigenan, Doctor, 84. 

Emmet, Robert: early childhood, 206; at Trinity, 207-212; his 
eloquence at Trinity, 208; his expulsion, 211 ; relations With 
Tom Moore, 212, 213; life in France, 214-216; audience 
with Napoleon, 215; tricked to his death, 217-219; the 
Burke papers, 218; preparations for rebellion, 220-222; the 
dash on the Castle, 222, 223 ; relations with Sarah Curran, 
224-228; his arrest, 226; his trial, 228-235; his execution, 
235, 236. 

Fenian Brotherhood: 383-387; motives and character, 388-397; 
Butt's tribute to, 400-404; effect on Butt, 406, 407; Butt 
solicits their support for one constitutional effort, 408; 
their faith in Butt, 418, 419; Parnell attracts their notice, 
436 ; cultivated by Parnell, 438 ; open bid for their support, 
442; Parnell wins Fenian respect, 443; Parnell declines to 
join the Brotherhood, 444, 445; Fenians and the land re- 
form, 464. 

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 152, 






INDEX 521 

Flood, Henry : youth and studies, 4-6 ; enters parliament, 6 ; first 
attack on government, 7, 8 ; creates a Patriot party, 8 ; mar- 
riage and life at Farmsley, 9 ; plans opposition to the Mar- 
quis of Townsend, 10, 11; supports the Limitation bill, 11; 
opposes Augmentation bill, 12; his connection with the 
Undertakers, 12, 13 ; leads the fight against altering Money 
bills in England, 14, 15 ; makes satirical attack on Town- 
send, 16; speech against Townsend, 17; drives Townsend 
from Ireland, 18, 19 ; relations with Lord Harcourt, 20-24 ; 
returns to Patriot party on Free Trade issue, 26; his de- 
fense of his course, 27, 28; his fight for Simple Repeal, 
29-34; quarrel with Grattan, 34; his popularity with the 
Volunteers, 35, 36; his fight for parliamentary reform, 
37-41 ; his oratory, 43-45. 

Ford, Patrick, 459, 465. 

Free Trade, 26, 51, 52. 

Gladstone, 398, 420, 434, 456, 460-467, 471-474, 476-478, 483, 486- 
490, 493-496, 498, 501. 

Grattan, Henry: early life, 45-51 ; fight for free trade, 51-56; for 
the independence of parliament, 57-71 ; against Pitt's com- 
mercial propositions, 72-75; his fight against corruption 
through pensions, 75-77; fight against tithe evils, 77-80; 
attitude on the Regency, 81-83; fight for Catholic rights, 
83-86; the Fitzwilliam incident, 86-88; fight against cor- 
ruption of the government, 88-96; against ruling Ireland 
by martial law, 96-98 ; his reasons for retiring from parlia- 
ment, 98-100; his nervous breakdown, 100; his return to 
parliament and fight against the Union, 101-108; duel 
with Corrv, 107; effect of Union upon him, 108; his work 
for Catholic emancipation, 109-112; his dramatic journey 
to London, 111; his character, 112-116; his oratory, 116- 
126. 

Grattan, Mrs. Henry, 100-103. 

Grenville, Lord, 194. 

Haltigan, John, 386, 387, 390. 

Harcourt, Lord : his character, 20 ; his policy, 20-26. 

Healy, Tim, 505, 507. Ann , 

Home Rule: the Home-Rule Movement organized, 409; disad- 
vantages of early struggle, 409-411 ; Butt's idea of, 411-413 ; 
Butt's plan of battle, 414; Parnell assumes leadership, 419; 
absorption of Land League, 450; appeal to America for, 
452-455, 459; Parnell in elections of '85 makes it the issue, 
480-484 ; Gladstone won over to, 486 ; preparation of bill 
of '86, 485, 486; Gladstone's troubles with liberals over, 
487; Parnell's speech on, 488; and the elections of 1892, 
497 ; pledge for repudiated by Rosebery, 507 ; alliance with 
liberals on, 508; the Volunteers' movement, 508. 



522 INDEX 

Informers, 146-153. 
"Irish People," 385, 386, 389, 428. 

Irish Volunteers, 30, 31, 33, 35-40, 53-55, 57, 63, 64, 68, 71, 133, 139, 
151, 172, 508. 

Keogh, John, 83, 247-249, 258. 
Kickman, Chas. Joseph, 385. 
Kilwarden, Lord, 152, 155, 223. 

Labouchere, Henry, 494, 497. 

Land League: 446-451; Parnell's American tour for, 451-456, 
458, 459; Patrick Ford's cooperation, 459, 460; becomes a 
power in Ireland, 460; arrest of Parnell and effect on, 461 ; 
forces concessions from Gladstone, 463 ; attitude toward 
Land Act of '81, 465; Parnell's advice to in Wexford 
speech, 466-468; "Captain Moonlight," 469; effect of Par- 
nell's imprisonment on, 470. 

Langrishe, Hercules, 9. 

Luby, Thomas Clarke, 385, 386, 389, 390. 

McCarthy, Justin, 470, 498, 499, 505, 507. 

McGee, Thomas D., 356, 357. 

Malone, Anthony, 7, 8. 

Manchester Martyrs, 397, 428, 431, 435, 439. 

Meagher, Thomas Francis: youth and education, 330-332; joins 
Young Ireland and assigned as speaker, 333 ; his first Con- 
ciliation Hall speech, 333, 334; his bitterness against the 
Whig Alliance, 335; his Sword speech, 336-338; declines 
overtures of O'Connell, 339; helps organize the Irish Con- 
federation, 339; effect of the famine on the militant move- 
ment, 340 ; his last constitutional speech, 341 ; he stands for 
Waterford, 342, 343; the spirit of Young Ireland, 344; 
joins deputation of Young Irelanders to Paris, 345; ar- 
rested for sedition, 346; plans for the uprising, 347, 348; 
campaigning for the rebellion, 348, 349; his trial for sedi- 
tion, 350, 351 ; opposes the rescue of Mitchell, 351 ; is 
again arrested for sedition, 252, 353; again appeals to the 
country, 354 ; becomes frankly revolutionary, 356 ; prepares 
to strike, 356, 357; reasons for failure of rebellion, 358; is 
arrested, tried, condemned, 359, 360; his American career, 
360-362 ; his oratory, 362-372. 

Mitchell, John, 335, 336, 341, 346, 348, 350-353, 361, 404, note. 

Morley, John, 482, 485, 489, 490, 497. 

Mullaghmast, meeting at, 308-310. 

"Nation, The," 328, 332, 335, 341. 
Norbury, Lord, 228, 230-235, 295. 

O'Brien, Smith, 332, 333, 336, 346, 349, 350, 356, 358, 364, 373, 380. 



INDEX 523 

Obstruction: Young Ireland's plan for, 341 ; Butt's mild form of, 
417, 418; Biggar's exhibition of, 431, 432; Biggar's idea of, 
433 ; Parnell's obstructive methods, 438-441 ; on the South 
African bill, 442, 443; effect of on Fenians, 443; on For- 
ster's Coercion bill, 462. 

O'Connell, Daniel : childhood, 239-241 ; in France, 241, 242 ; early 
studies, 243, 244; relations with United Irishmen, 245, 246; 
repudiates Pitt's proffered bribe to the Catholics, 246, 247 ; 
assumes leadership of the Catholics, 247-249; advocates 
constant agitation, 250, 251 ; # fight against the Securities, 
251-259; encounters opposition of Sheil, 256, 257; his 
cultivation of Protestant support, 259-262; his influence 
against lawlessness, 263 ; his efforts to harmonize support- 
ers, 264, 265 ; his faith amid discouragements, 266, 267 ; his 
attitude toward rivals, 267-271 ; he organizes the Catholic 
Association, 272-274; the spirit of his crusade, 275; his 
"mob" speeches, 276-279; the association put down, 279- 
280; he capitalizes Duke of York's speech, 280-282; carries 
the Waterford election, 283 ; is elected for Clare, 283-285 ; 
the emancipation victory, 286; his reputation on entering 
parliament, 287, 288; his plans for the repeal of the Union, 
288 ; his fight against the Coercion bill, 289 ; he forms alli- 
ance with the Whigs, 290 ; his Irish program, 293 ; his de- 
fense of Ireland, 295 ; he abandons hope of the English 
alliance, 296 ; he sounds the tocsin for the repeal fight, 297 ; 
organizes the Repeal Association, 299; the monster meet- 
ings, 299; nature of his repeal speeches, 301; attempts to 
assassinate him, 302, 303 ; attacks on his reputation, 303 ; 
the meeting at Tara, 306; at Mullaghmast, 308; the Clon- 
tarf meeting proscribed, 310; is arrested, 311; his trial, 
311, 312; his prison life, 312; his break with Young Ireland, 
314 ; his last appeal for the famine victims, 314, 315 ; his 
last journey, 315; character and home life, 316-320; his 
oratory, 320-327. 

O'Donnell, F. H., 411, 412, 414, 430, 433, 460. 

O'Gorman, Richard, 356. 

O'Leary, John, 385, 386, 390. 

Orangemen: secret societies of, 264; circulation of Duke of 
York's speech by, 280. 

Orr, William, 141-143. 

Parnell, Charles Stewart: parentage, 425, 426; inherited hates, 
427; at English schools, 427, 428; raid on his mother's 
home, 428 ; effect of Manchester, 428, 429 ; stands for Par- 
liament, 429; effect of defeat, 430; his election, 430; lack of 
preparation for the career, 431; watching the game, 431- 
434; his delight in the obstruction of Biggar, 431^133; his 
defense of Manchester martyrs, 435 ; effect on the Fenians, 
435, 436; his Liverpool speech, 437; his plan to enlist the 
Irish in England, 438; he begins obstruction, 439-441; wins 



524 INDEX 

Parnell, Charles Stewart — Continued. 

Fenian support, 441, 442; obstructing South African bill, 
442, 443; declines to join the Fenian Brotherhood, 444, 
445 ; wins support of Clan-na-Gael, 445 ; accepts land pro- 
gram of Davitt, 446-451; his American tour, 451^55; 
helps liberals in election and holds the balance of power, 
456; demands a more liberal land law, 456; follows its 
defeat by arousing Ireland, 458, 459; makes Land League 
do battle against England, 460; is arrested for sedition, 
461 ; battles against the Forster Coercion act, 462 ; lashes 
Ireland into fury, 462; forces Gladstone to bring in land 
law, 463-465; urges Land League to represent tenants, 
465; is arrested, 468; at Kilmainham prison, 469; dictates 
to Gladstone from prison, 470; leaves prison the victor, 
471; effect of Phcenix Park murders, 471-474; continues 
fighting for more concessions, 474; Forster's attack on 
him, 474, 475; he plans overthrow of Gladstone, 476-478; 
defeats him on the Budget, 478; gets concessions from 
conservatives, 479; dominates election of 1885, 480-484; 
Gladstone seeks alliance on promise of Home Rule, 484; 
the Home-Rule fight of '86, 485-489; puts Gladstone 
to fore to lead fight after defeat of bill, 490-492 ; is libeled 
by London Times, 492-495 ; his triumph, 495 ; the O'Shea 
divorce, 496 ; effect on the party, 497, 498 ; his fight in Ire- 
land for vindication, 498, 499; his death, 500; his character, 
500, 501 ; his oratory, 506. 

Parnell, Fanny, 428. 

Parnell, Sir John, 181, 260, 427. 

Parsons, Sir Lawrence, 176, 180, 186. 

Peel, Sir Robert, 194, 196, 289, 290, 296, 305, 312, 335. 

Phillips, Charles, 136, 155, 159, 212, 259. 

Phoenix Park murders, 472, 473. 

Pigott, Richard, 493, 494. 

Pitt, William, 72-75, 93, 94, 98, 176, 200, 217, 218, 235, 246. 

Plunkett, Lord: youth, early associations and studies, 170-173; 
purpose in entering parliament, 174; state of the parlia- 
ment, 174-176; he defends the liberty of the press, 177; 
his first attack on corruption of the government, 178; 
leads fight against the Union, 179; his contributions to the 
Anti-Union, 180, 181 ; his plan of attack on the conspiracy, 
181; his defiance of Castlereagh's threats, 182-185; his 
answer to the Union Duelling Club, 186, 187 ; he forces the 
fighting on the Union, 188-190 ; the final fight, 191 ; effect 
of the Union on his spirits, 192, 193; his speech against 
Emmet, 193; his career in the English parliament, 194; 
his closing years, 195 ; his oratory, 196-203. 

Ponsonby, George, 177. 

Press, Irish: defense of by Plunkett, 177, 178; by Curran, 141- 
144; by Emmet, 209. 



INDEX 525 

Quarantottl, Monsignor, 258. 

Redmond, John, 497, 503, 505, 507. 

Regency, The, 81-83. 

Rosebery, Lord, 478, 507. 

Rossa, O'Donovan, 385, 422, 446, 447. 

Russell, Lord John, 290, 291, 312, 335, 395. 

Sheares, John and Henry, 146-149. 

Sheil, Richard Lalor, 256, 266-268, 270-272, 311, 322, 323, 335, 

365, 502. 
Simple Repeal, 29-34. 
Stephens, James, 384-387. 

Tara, meeting at, 306-308. 
Tithe evils, 77-80. 
Tone, Wolfe, 152, 171, 173. 

Townsend, Marquis of: character of, 10; his designs on Flood, 
11 ; his policy in Ireland, 12-19. 

Undertakers, The, 7, 8, 13. 

Union, The : Pitt's proffered bribe to Catholics, 169 ; O'Connell's 
answer to, 246, 247; parliament ripe for in corruption, 
174, 175 ; Cornwallis' attitude toward, 175 ; the work of 
Castlereagh and Cook, 176 ; how revolution of '98 was used 
to further it, 180 ; pamphlets for and against, 180, 181 ; 
first debate on, 181-186; the second debate on, 186; the 
Union Duelling Club, 186 ; third debate on, 187 ; last debate 
on, 188-191; fate of its champions, 191, 192; effect of on 
Dublin, 192, 193; Grattan reenters parliament to oppose, 
101-108; effect of on Grattan, 108; on Curran, 153; 
Meagher's graphic description of, 371, 372. 

United Irishmen, 96, 98, 138, 146-153, 178, 180, 189, 214, 245. 

Whig Alliance, 290, 293, 296. 
Yelverton, 29, 68, 133. 



INDEX TO SPEECHES 

Henry Flood: 

Attack on Lord Townsend and his mercenaries, 17. 
Defense of Flood's course under Harcourt (reply to Grat- 

tan), 27. 
Four extracts from speech on Simple Repeal, 32. 
Defense of the Volunteers, 38. 
Henry Grattan: 

Denunciation of the Perpetual Mutiny Bill, 62. 

Tribute to Volunteers and threat to use them, 65. 

Three extracts from speech on the Declaration of Rights, 

59, 69, 70. 
Attack on Pitt's Commercial Propositions, 73. 
Attack on government's corrupt pension list, 76. 
Extract from speech on the tithe evil, 79. 
Plea^ in Irish^ parliament for Catholic rights, 80, 85. 
Philippic against Westmoreland's system of corruption, 89. 
Seven extracts from speeches denouncing corruption, 

91-93. 
Speech against the sale of peerages, 94, 95. 
Protest against suspension of habeas corpus, 97. 
Protest against disarming of Irishmen by General Lake, 98. 
Three extracts from speeches against the Union, 103-105, 

107. m 
Philippic against Isaac Corry, 106. 

Plea for Catholic Emancipation (London parliament), 110. 
Philippic against Flood, 119. 
Tribute to Dr. Kirwan, 121. 
Tribute to Charlemont, 122. 

John Philpot Curran: 

His denunciation of corruption in parliament, 134. 
Tribute to the Volunteers, 138. 
Spirit of the British law invoked, 139. 
Extract from defense of Finnerty, 143. 
Word picture of Ireland's misery, 144. 
Denunciation of O'Brien, the informer, 145. 
Extract from his defense of the Sheares, 147, 148. 
Denunciation of Reynolds, the informer, 150. 
Word picture of the death of Orr, 163. 
Tribute to Lord Avonmore, 164. 
Word picture of lustful conqueror, 161. 
Ridicule of Dr. Duigenan, the bigot, 166. 

526 



INDEX 527 

Lord Plunkett: 

Protest against destroying liberty of Irish press, 177. 
Denunciation of misgovernment in Ireland, 183. 
Six extracts from his philippics against the Union, 183-189. 
Denunciation of Castlereagh, 201. 

Denunciation of Cornwallis' election tour for the Union, 
202. 

Robert Emmet: 

His speech from the dock, 230. 

Daniel O'Connell : 

Call to arms for the emancipation fight, 250. 

Denunciation of the Securities in Emancipation bill, 252. 

Reply to Councillor Bellew, 255. 

Denunciation of religious bigotry, 260. 

Tribute to the Protestant patriots of Ireland, 261. 

Appeal for the support of Irish industries, 262. 

Appeal for unity of action among friends of emancipation, 

265. 
Tribute to Grattan's memory, 269. 
Appeal to the fighting spirit of the Celt, 274. 
Denunciation of English ingratitude, 276. 
Reply to the Marquis of Anglesea, 281. 
Denunciation of the Tories, 291. 
Appeal to the English in Liverpool, 294. 
Protest against the slandering of Ireland, 295. 
"Ireland again is free" (Repeal speech), 297. 
Reply to the English threat of force, 303. 
Defiant challenge to Peel, 306. 
Appeal at Mullaghrast, 308. 
Tribute to the spirit of Kildare, 309. 
Denunciation of the Duke of Cambridge, 314. 
Denunciation of Lord Gower, 324. 

Thomas Francis Meagher: 

Declaration of war on the Union, 334. 

His appeal to the sword, 337. 

"Liberty worth fighting for," 341. 

Denunciation of the Whigs and bigots at Waterford, 343. 

Four extracts from revolutionary speeches on French 
Revolution of 1848, 344. 

Denunciation of inaction at Limerick, 349. 

Three extracts from great speech on Slievenamon Moun- 
tain, 354. 

His speech from the dock, 359. 

His denunciation of the lords, 364. 

On the imprisonment of Smith O'Brien, 364, 365. 

Lyrical tribute to Swiss liberty, 366. 

Extract from his "Spirit of Liberty," 367. 

Word picture of the starving at Skibbereen, 368. 



52$ INDEX 

Thomas Francis Meagher— Continued, 

Swiss spirit contrasted with Irish docility, 369. 

Word picture of the famine, 370. 

Word picture of the consummation of the Union, 371. 

Isaac Butt: 

Protest against military display at Fenian trials, 388. 

Defense of Luby— "Liberty worth a drop of blood," 389. 

Defense of the Fenians, 391. 

Denunciation of the court proceedings in Fenian trial, 392. 

Defense of Burke — attack on government's honesty, 393. 

Tribute to the Fenian's character, 400. 

Word picture of the Cabra amnesty meeting, 402. 

His explanation of his conversion to patriotism, 405. 

Word picture of the home-breaking of the emigrant, 416. 

A plea for an evicted peasant's home, 421. 

His appeal to the Irish patriots of the future, 422. 

Charles Stewart Parnell: 

Appeal to the Irish in England (Liverpool), 437. 

The "Tread on English toes" speech (Manchester), 441. 

"Keep a firm grip upon your homesteads" (Westport), 448. 

Appeal for famine sufferers (New York), 452. 

Sarsfield's dying lament (Cleveland), 453. 

"The Landlords must go" (St. Louis), 453. 

The Irish Coercion act (St. Louis), 454. 

The Boycott speech (Ennis), 458. 

Attack on Gladstone (Leeds, 1881), 466. 

"One plank, National Independence" (Dublin), 480. 

"Legislate for Ireland or not at all" (Dublin), 481. 

"Ireland will knock with a mailed hand" (Dublin), 483. 

Serving notice on England (House of Commons), 488. 










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